JUNE 28, 1912] 
method was to be followed by an abandon- 
ment of everything that had been done in the 
past. This was a serious error of judgment, 
and has led to no end of wasteful educational 
experiments. Because the laboratory method 
is good in one place is no proof that it is good 
in all. When I want to learn all that I pos- 
sibly can of a new country I visit it if I can 
do so, and see all that I can of it, but I do 
not hesitate to use maps and read books per- 
taining to the country. I may even ask the 
people who have lived there longer than I to 
tell me all that they know. In this way I 
build up my knowledge of the country, and it 
is good and reliable, far more so, perhaps, than 
if I had relied wholly upon what I could have 
seen personally. 
And so it is in botany. I must surely see 
as much for myself as possible, but life is 
quite too short for me to hope to see all that 
is known with my own eyes. Here and there, 
at critical and strategic points, I must see for 
myself and then I can go a long ways, when I 
must again get my reckoning by an observa- 
tion. The mariner does not sail the seas by 
doing nothing but make mathematical ob- 
servations. It would be slow sailing indeed 
were he to do so. 
And yet this is just what some of the book- 
makers are planning to have the children do. 
They are to learn everything about plants by 
the experimental method. They lose sight of 
the fact that there is no special saving grace 
in the labor of making experiments. We make 
experiments on plants in order that we may 
learn botany; we do not learn botany in order 
to make experiments on plants. Let every 
teacher remember that useless experiments in- 
volve as real a waste of time as dawdling or 
idling. I can walk from Lincoln to Denver, 
but it takes so much time that it will pay me 
far better to be carried there on a railway 
train. 
All this is suggested by Mr. Payne’s “ Man- 
ual of Experimental Botany” (American 
Book Company), whose purpose, the author 
tells us, is “to teach botany by experiment.” 
In two hundred and twenty-eight “ experi- 
ments” and “ exercises ” the pupil is led over 
SCIENCE 
995 
and into and among a great many facts per- 
taining to plants. Some of these exercises 
will prove to be interesting and helpful to 
pupils, but there are so many of them that it 
is quite impossible for the pupil to perform 
them with any care. It would have been far 
better to have selected a much smaller num- 
ber, and to have placed them properly in a 
scheme outlining the subject. That would 
have introduced the pupil to the science of 
botany, 7. e., to an organized system of knowl- 
edge of plants. As it is, the child will have 
spent a great deal of time and energy in the 
making of experiments not definitely corre- 
lated, nor organized into a science. The pupil 
will have the results (more or less accurate) of 
a considerable number of experiments, but 
they will not constitute botany, that is, the 
science of botany, and it may be doubted 
whether in this unorganized form they will 
have any educative value. It would not be a 
bad thing to use this book as a store from 
which to draw such experiments as the teacher 
and pupil might wish to use in going system- 
atically over the field of botany, although in 
some cases we must warn the teacher that the 
experiments will not “prove” all that they 
are supposed to demonstrate (e. g., 130, 131, 
132, 189, 145, 148, ete.). On the other hand, 
many of the experiments are well planned, and 
will prove interesting and instructive. 
A HANDFUL OF LITTLE MANUALS 
It would seem that the solution of the prob- 
lem of a handy manual for field work in sys- 
tematic botany is to be reached by the com- 
pilation of little books covering restricted 
areas, or even confined to limited portions of 
the year. 
Several years ago Professors Clements, 
Rosendahl and Butters brought out a little 
pamphlet of 40 pages entitled “Guide to the 
Spring Flowers of Minnesota,” which has been 
well received by the schools of the state, and 
to this they have added a “ Guide to the Trees 
and Shrubs of Minnesota,” “Guide to the 
Ferns and Fern Allies of Minnesota” and 
“Guide to the Autumn Flowers.” In the 
