January 20, 1899.] 



SCIENCE. 



99 



It is sometimes objected that practical 

 diificulties in thus teaching the science are 

 too great to be overcome, for teachers are 

 untrained, experiment is difficult and appli- 

 ances are expensive. All this is in great 

 measure true, but raj)id]y coming to be less 

 so, and no one expects, nor is it desirable, 

 that changes should come too rapidly. Many 

 colleges are now training teachers in this 

 knowledge and spii'it, and simpler, less ex- 

 pensive and more logically conclusive ex- 

 periments for demonstrating the funda- 

 mental principles of physiology are being 

 invented. There is, however, one diflBculty 

 which must be admitted to be very real, 

 namely, the present unorganized state of 

 ecology. At present this division of the 

 science is little better than a series of huge 

 guesses ; verj' little really conclusive work 

 has been done in it, and no distinct methods 

 of ecological experiment nor princiijles of 

 ecological evidence have been formulated. 

 Just here lies one of the most attractive 

 fields open to botanists to-day, one whose 

 returns will be of priceless value to botan- 

 ical teaching. 



A second advance is towards a more nat- 

 ural morphology. Next after classification 

 the phase of botany most taught in elemen- 

 tary courses is morphology. But morphol- 

 ogy as taught in our schools is dominated 

 by a rigid formalism based on the idealistic 

 system introduced into botany by Goethe, a 

 system easy to teach and one that appeals 

 to a certain stage of culture in both race 

 and individual, but one objectively un- 

 true, and one that, if allowed to dominate 

 and direct morphological conceptions, is 

 actually pernicious and sterilizing. It is 

 only through an approach to structure 

 from its statical or systematic side that 

 one can be satisfied with the conception of 

 plant morphology which views the higher 

 plant as a combination of elements so im- 

 mutable as to retain their nature through 

 the most extreme changes and combinations, 



even to the point of being present wlien in- 

 visible, that can find carpel and calyx in 

 all inferior ovaries, can homologize the 

 parts of a stamen with the parts of a green 

 leaf, or ovules with something on the leafy 

 shoot. From this formalism the newer 

 books have broken away ; their morphology 

 conforms to the observed facts of plant de- 

 velopment, which show adaptation not to a 

 plan, but to conditions as they have existed. 



Among minor advances may be men- 

 tioned a wider use of the inductive inves- 

 tigating spirit showing itself in the growing 

 custom of placing new matter before the 

 student in the form of problems so arranged 

 that their solution comes just within the 

 scope of his own powers. Another is a 

 greater flexibility in laboratory methods. 

 The day of published laboratory guides to 

 be put into the hands of students is, I be- 

 lieve, passing ; they will be replaced by out- 

 lines made by the teacher for each exercise 

 to fit his particular mode of instruction and 

 the material in hand. There is greater 

 nicety and exactness, too, in the laboratory 

 work; the 'rough sketch' is less heard of, 

 and drawings whatever else they may be, 

 must be diagrammatically accurate. An- 

 other is a better proportioning of laboratory 

 and text-book work. There is a reaction 

 from the tendency to make laboratory work 

 everything and to scorn the text-book, and 

 the latter, for supplementary reading after 

 the laboratory work, is again in favor, and 

 it is for this purpose the newer and better 

 books are written. All of these advances 

 and tendencies are most healthful and in 

 the line of real advance. 



I shall close this subject by pointing out 

 three marked tendencies, not of botany 

 alone, but of education in general, which, 

 in my opinion, are most rich in promise for 

 the advancement of botanical teaching, and 

 which, therefore, all botanists should unite 

 to promote. The first is the tendency to 

 pay less attention to methods and more to 



