514 
DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDANCE 
* BOTANY AFTER THE WAR 
TueErE has been running in the issues of the 
New Phytologist, beginning in December, 1917, 
a discussion on “ The Reconstruction of Ele- 
mentary Botanical Teaching,” which all Amer- 
ican botanists alive to the future of their sub- 
ject should read. British botanists are talking 
over ways and means of bettering their teach- 
ing with a degree of criticism and candor 
hopeful for significant reforms. 
It is a discussion that should result in an 
attempt to modify elementary teaching in such 
a manner that certain material, some of it quite 
new to prevailing practise but believed to be of 
fundamental importance, shall find a place or 
adequate treatment in elementary courses. 
Since introductory courses can not be long 
courses certain subjects, some of them time 
honored, are brought into court to justify their 
value or to give way wholly or in part to the 
demands of the new. 
The universities of the United States have 
this year been asked by the government to 
present in prescribed terms of twelve weeks a 
group of subjects for a very large body of men 
—the Student Army Training Corps. One of 
these is biology and in most cases the course is 
likely to be organized as of two subjects, bot- 
any and zoology, which, for practical reasons, 
will probably be treated in large measure apart 
from one another. Botany is, therefore, to be 
taught by a large number of instructors in 
courses that will approximate the equivalent of 
six or twelve weeks from nine to eighteen hours 
a week. The mental adjustments of the in- 
structors to the pedagogical problems presented 
will be great, their reactions will be various. 
Compelled by the time limits to give a short 
course they must lay aside many a pet affection 
for this or that topic and practise a rigid selec- 
tion of material to a degree never before de- 
manded of them. There is certain to result 
from this large experiment a very considerable 
readjustment of values in the minds of those 
who organize the work. Botany after the war 
will not be taught in many institutions as it 
was before. 
In the first place instructors will feel 
strongly the pressure to present practical as- 
SCIENCE 
[N. 8S. Von. XLVIII. No. 1247 
pects of the subject since their students are 
definitely fitting themselves for special fields 
of interest. There will not be time to develop 
in detail any of the great fields of botany, 
morphology, physiology or ecology. All that 
can be hoped is to give some understanding of 
plants as living things, with structure devel- 
oped to accomplish certain results, with life 
habits adapted for certain ends, organisms that 
fit into a scheme of evolution subject to cer- 
tain simple principles. Always in the mind of 
the teacher will be the desire to show how plant 
life works harm or renders service to man. 
Since practical considerations are so largely 
to establish the ends toward which such a 
course will lead and to guide the lines along 
which the course is to be framed, and because 
the course must be short and the students will 
not in general have had much training in sci- 
ence, the problems of the selection of material 
and methods of treatment become tests of 
judgment more severe perhaps than any which 
ever before have been presented to teachers of 
biology. : 
Morphology obviously can not ask for much 
more than the opportunity to serve the re- 
quirements of physiology since a knowledge of 
structure is basic to an understanding of func- 
tion and life processes. The study of compara- 
tive morphology with the end in view of de- 
veloping phylogenetic relationships is clearly 
impossible in so short and condensed a course. 
Physiology must content itself with simple 
considerations because the students will have 
had little training in physics and chemistry. 
General principles of plant physiology alone 
can be presented. Since the thought of the 
whole world is at present so largely centered 
on food problems the subjects of food elabora- 
tion and food storage should take a prominent 
place in the course. 
Ecology has its part to perform but will be 
severely limited by the fact that extended ac- 
quaintance with groups of plants can not be 
given. It must rely chiefly on what general 
information the students may possess of for- 
est, prairie, shrub and swamp vegetation, to- 
gether with some elementary facts of physiog- 
raphy and geology. 
