486 SECTIONAL TRANSACTIONS.—K. 
As to the university course, a good class in the Honours Final School is expected 
from the candidates, who will normally take four years to complete the course for 
the degree. During the undergraduate period it would be a mistake to emphasise 
the vocational aspects of the science. These will come later on. The undergraduate 
period is the stage during which he needs to be trained broadly in scientific method, 
and in the main branches of his principal subject. Thus he will acquire not only a 
right scientific insight, but a suitably broad outlook over his branch of science, in 
this case botany. By no means should the more vocational objects be allowed to 
interfere with this laying of a broad foundation of knowledge which will be priceless 
to him later on, but if missed now will probably never be made good. 
It is specially important that the training should encourage the desire of investiga- 
tion and research. And by this I do not mean a set ‘ research,’ which I deprecate at 
this stage, but that the laboratory work itself should be so planned and conducted 
as to serve as a training in research, instead of, as is sometimes the case, a more or 
less mechanical method of merely verifying what the student has been told in lectures. 
This is a really vital matter which may largely make or mar the student as an 
investigator. 
As to the subjects which the course should include, it is clear that the biological 
interactions of the plants and their environment (in the largest sense) must form an 
important part of their work. Plant physiology, and the essentials of pathology, will 
necessarily form subjects of study. Some knowledge of genetics and cytology will 
naturally be included, but genetics is a vast and specialised subject, much of which 
is more suitable for study after a man has taken his degree, and then mainly for those 
who have the special qualifications required for its successful prosecution. 
As a rule, when a man has taken his degree he will apply for an appointment, but 
it is very profitable for himself, and at least equally for his employers, if he can spend 
further time in being trained specifically in research: He will thus be shown how to 
escape pitfalls and to formulate his plans of investigation on most profitable lines. 
In other words, this is the period when he should spend some time in vocational 
training. 
Adequate scholarships are provided for this both for cadets entering the Colonial 
service and also for those engaged in research under the Empire Cotton-growing 
Corporation. These scholarships are usually continued for two years. There are 
also means for training of an analogous character provided by the Ministry of 
Agriculture and various other bodies, whilst some of the planting associations and 
companies are not seldom willing to give facilities for special training to their entrants 
before embarking directly on their professional careers. And opportunities of ‘ study 
leave’ are fairly amply provided for, and are invaluable as enabling a man to keep 
in real touch with current investigation. 
Dr. W. B. BrieRLey. 
The narrow academic vision and experiential inadequacy of most university 
teachers of botany, reinforced by their irrational fear of applied developments 
and by the vested interests of the subject, have led to an almost total neglect 
of ‘applied’ botany and an obsessive concentration on ‘pure’ science. As a 
result most academic schools are not competent to train botanists for economic and 
industrial positions, and are only competent to teach ‘ academic’ botany to students 
who in turn become teachers of ‘academic’ botany. The training of botanists for 
economic and industrial positions demands a much wider basis of knowledge and 
experience, a different outlook and a different balance of values from those in present 
academic teaching. This orientation does not imply any loss but rather an enhance- 
ment of educational and cultural values, which do not lie in a subject gua subject 
but in one’s relations to a subject. It does, however, imply a different source of 
inspiration—the growing plant in both its natural and its humanly created environ- 
ment rather than the preserved specimen; industrial and economic need rather 
than academic tradition; the practical reality of everyday life rather than the 
precious artificiality of scholasticism. It implies different ideals and cultural values 
having root not in classicism but in human welfare and industrial and agricultural 
progress. An adequate training would involve a fundamental reorganisation of the 
university botanical curriculum so that the institution and the training become fitted 
to the needs of the subject and the student ; at present the subject and the student 
are made to fit the needs of the institution and the training. An adequate training 
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