Decembee 19, 1919] 



SCIENCE 



553 



duction of better crops, such as alfalfa and 

 the sorghums, and in the Eocky Mountain 

 and Pacific regions, where irrigation is prac- 

 tised and higher-priced crops are grown, the 

 percentage increase in acre-value of the 

 products, equals or surpasses the percentage 

 increase in acreage of the improved land. 



Taking the evidence as a whole for the 

 entire country, it appears from the general 

 average at the foot of the last two columns, 

 that in forty years the net increase in food 

 production in the United States ran behind 

 that of the land brought imder cultivation by 

 about two and one half per cent. In other 

 words, the people on the farms failed to raise 

 enough more products per acre, as measured 

 by the average selling price, to correspond 

 with the amount of land they were culti- 

 vating. That this is partly due to a falling off 

 of agricultural labor is probable; that it is 

 partly due to diminishing fertility from con- 

 tiniious cropping is measurably certain. It 

 is likewise evident that this general situation 

 has been arrived at in spite of the fact that 

 the period in question, covers nearly the 

 whole period of the rise and growth of the 

 state agricultural colleges and experiment 

 stations, and the development of the enor- 

 mous activities of the TJnited States Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture, through all of which 

 agencies, new and better systems of tillage, 

 cropping and rotation, and feeding of farm 

 animals, have been introduced and dissemi- 

 nated, all of which should contribute to 

 operate toward counter-balancing the losses 

 from the other sources. 



If the agricultural situation has been thus 

 detailed at some length, it is in order to bring 

 out the vital fact that there is a definite 

 demand upon science, and especially upon 

 that part of science that is capable of dealing 

 scientifically with at least some of the factors 

 underlying plant production, to lend its aid 

 to the relief of a situation that is becoming 

 worse instead of better. This is the matter 

 with which the agricultural colleges have to 

 deal and which bears a vital relation to the 

 teaching of botany. 



So far as botany is concerned, the main 

 problem from the educational standpoint is. 



how can the young people in the public 

 schools receive such a training and discipline 

 as will be of scientific value, and at the same 

 time be of vital economic use in their every- 

 day life. 



As a general social question, the problem 

 is, how can this subject which can unques- 

 tionably be made of economic value, be so 

 handled as not to destroy its integrity as a 

 part of the teaching of science, and at the 

 same time contribute its maximum help to 

 agriculture, l^ow our principal business with 

 secondary school pupils is not merely to give 

 botanical discipline in an abstract sense, but 

 to give such students as broad and as scien- 

 tifically accurate a knowledge as possible of 

 the only plants with which they are ever 

 likely to deal, and from which the world gets 

 its living. About ninety-five per cent, of 

 high-school graduates go no further. Should 

 effort be devoted to giving these immature 

 minds a hasty and inadequate sketch of a 

 botanist's realization of the plant world, or 

 should we rather be contented with giving 

 them that part of botany that will be most 

 useful and necessary in their probable occu- 

 pations. I think unquestionably the latter. 

 We are certainly not precluded thereby from 

 making botany a subject of disciplinary value. 

 Charles Darwin was not a superficial student 

 of plants, for the reason that he directed his 

 studies to those phenomena which the seed 

 plants alone offer to the imaided eye. After 

 the pupil has 1hus built up a solid and sub- 

 stantial knowledge of the way in which the 

 higher plants are constructed in their more 

 obvious aspects, and how they perform their 

 work, time should then be devoted to widen- 

 ing this plant horizon, by bringing in the 

 lower groups in succession. But even here 

 it is wise to avoid a strenuous attempt at a 

 scientific discussion of the alternation of gen- 

 erations. The object, at this juncture, should 

 mainly be to give the student an alga concept, 

 a fungus concept, a fern concept and so on, 

 that he need not go through life entirely 

 ignorant of what these lower forms of plant 

 life are, how and where they live, and their 

 economic relation to the earth, especially of 

 course to man. 



