Januaet 29, 1909] 



SCIENCE 



183 



thouglit the great value of Gray's " Manual 

 ■of Botany " as a guide for young students of 

 the science has been that in the fewest words 

 possible, and in the most exact manner those 

 old manuals from year to year have always 

 served as a guide for the young student to 

 find the position of the plant in which he is 

 interested in the plant kingdom. But in order 

 to do this he has always had to work, except 

 in the particular cases in which the common 

 names were given. I note with a feeling of 

 real regret and a feeling of real apprehension 

 for the value of the " Manual " in training 

 young students, that the authors have added 

 pictures of many of the common species of 

 plants. The best training in science that I 

 have was given me through my personal 

 efforts to identify plants in which I was in- 

 terested. I feel, if at that time I had had 

 -Gray's " New Manual," seventh edition, il- 

 lustratedi that much of any ability that I may 

 now have along the line of noting fine dis- 

 tinctions in the structure of plants and details 

 of variation, would never have been developed. 

 There never was a time when I was not hunt- 

 ing for a shorter road, and had I had this 

 well-illustrated " Manual " to look at I cer- 

 tainly should not have struggled up through 

 the details of structure and wording. I could 

 not have done so had I wished, for there 

 would have been the pictures staring at me 

 warning of a seeming waste of time. I could 

 not have made errors which in the very 

 making impressed the inefiiciency of my work 

 upon me. Though the drawings which the 

 authors have given do not show the features 

 and variations . which the natural plant 

 should bring to the student, yet they neverthe- 

 less show the general characters so plainly 

 that when the pages open the student will 

 have the name of his species lying imme- 

 diately before him. My belief is that the 

 value of the old "Manual," unillustrated, 

 consisted essentially in the fact that it com- 

 pelled' the student to study out every de- 

 tail of the plant before him in order to 

 prevent the possibility of going astray in the 

 divergent lines. Some one may say, now the 

 work will be upon species and not upon 

 genera and families. This must certainly be 



the result, for there will be no possible way 

 for a teacher to prevent the student from 

 tracing his plant backward. In this it would 

 appear that the author believed that the ac- 

 tual fact of knowing the name of the plant 

 will be of more value to the student than the 

 digging out of the detailed characters ob- 

 served in the specimens, and comparing these 

 with the fine gradations in the meaning of 

 the words of the descriptions. What teacher 

 of botany has not had difficulty in getting the 

 average student to study the characters of the 

 dandelion for the reason that the common 

 name has always been appended? To iUus- 

 lustrate my point, I think I am safe in saying 

 that many fairly well-trained botanists would 

 have difficulty in determining the position of 

 the plant known as ball-mustard (Neslia 

 paniculata) if they should chance to have 

 parts of the fruiting stalks only for examina- 

 tion. Yet the high-school teacher will only 

 need, now with the "New Manual," to turn 

 the question over to the most simple-minded 

 of his pupils and he will settle it within the 

 space of a few minutes by the simple process 

 of comparing the picture with the plant. I 

 ask, will the pupil have any more knowledge 

 of plants when through? 



Teachers of botany in agricultural colleges 

 have long contended that much of the old- 

 line botany is a waste of time, but I believe 

 the readers of this note will have hard work 

 to find a botanist of any intelligence who will 

 agree that the pictures add to Gray's 

 "Manual" as a student's text or reference 

 book, or will in any way tend towards the im- 

 provement in the thinking ability of high- 

 school students. 



It is much to be hoped that high school 

 superintendents and high-school teachers will 

 not have the desire to have their pupils learn 

 how to work by an easy road of picture com- 

 parison, and will still continue to use unil- 

 lustrated manuals that their pupils may not 

 be deprived of one of the finest sources of 

 botanical education. Plant anatomy and 

 plant physiology may have been greatly aided 

 by the development of well illustrated texts, 

 and the studies may have been popularized 

 somewhat thereby, but the writer can not be- 



