April 21, 1922] 



SCIENCE 



417 



angiosperms, certainly much of our collateral 

 evidence in genetics comes from the lower 

 foiTUs of both kingdoms. An adequate treat- 

 ment of the subject of genetics can not be had 

 under any system of administrative organiza- 

 tion which insists upon the drawing of hard 

 and fast departmental lines or in any environ- 

 ment which limits the instructor to the consid- 

 eration of either wild or domesticated forms of 

 life. In mj' judgment genetics falls in the same 

 category as cytology and evolution in which 

 the best instruction can not be given without 

 the opportunity of free and unrestricted choice 

 of illustrative material and evidence from both 

 plant and animal life. 



Although the science of genetics is by no 

 means as old as that of botany or zoology, its 

 growth and development has been and con- 

 tinues to be . of such magnitude that we are 

 j'apidly approaching the same state of affairs 

 that confronts the botanist and zoologist. The 

 elements of genetics in all of their details are 

 already extensive and numerous and it is be- 

 coming increasingly difficult adequately to treat 

 all phases of the subject even in an elementary 

 way in a single course without making it of 

 unreasonable length. The genetic instructor 

 must, therefore, decide what subject matter is 

 relevant to the object of his course and what 

 is irrelevant and of the former determine what 

 phases may reasonably be left to courses in 

 other biological sciences which may be made 

 prerequisite to the elementary course in 

 genetics and what may well be left for advanced 

 courses in genetics. I confess that the problem 

 of how far to go in the elementary course and 

 what to leave for the advanced course is at 

 times a most perplexing question. 



In order to reach the proper decision, we 

 must first define our objective. What is the 

 purpose of the elementary course in genetics? 

 What is its objective? Upon the answer to 

 these questions must our method of procedure 

 necessarily depend. It seems to me that any 

 course worthy of collegiate recognition and 

 standing must be primarily cultural in nature 

 and secondarily informational. It is, however, 

 not impossible to combine these two purposes 

 in any course of instruction even in the pro- 

 fessional school, but judging from the array of 



courses offered by some departments in some of 

 our agricultural colleges one may wonder if 

 the presentation of encyclopedic information 

 rather than the training of students to do inde- 

 pendent and original thinking is not the end 

 attained even though it may not be the objec- 

 tive sought. I wonder if we instructors in agri- 

 cultural colleges do not sometimes make the 

 mistake of thinking that the agricultural student 

 is not interested in anything that has no direct 

 connection with agricultural phenomena and 

 that it is necessary to sugar coat the pill by 

 giving our courses an agricultural flavor. I 

 admit that we have some students of this type 

 but I believe that they constitute a small minor- 

 ity of the student body, at least at the begin- 

 ning of their college course. If, however, many 

 of the courses which students find in the agri- 

 cultural college are largely informational in 

 nature, it is not at all strange that some should 

 regard a modern course in genetics as highly 

 theoretical and of little practical application. 

 When I recall that many of our most successful 

 farmers representing our highest type of rural 

 citizenship are not agricultural college gradu- 

 ates, I wonder if we have perhaps not over 

 emphasized the value of an agricultural course 

 as contrasted to courses in the so-called pure 

 sciences, languages and the humanities even for 

 the man who expects to spend his life and make 

 his living on the farm. I do not underestimate 

 the value of the information he gets in tech- 

 nical agricultural courses but I question if the 

 time that the student is often required to spend 

 in getting this information is proportional to 

 the amount of real and useful information that 

 he gets. One of my colleagues in one of our 

 technical departments recently said to me, "We 

 can give our students all that we know that 

 will actually work on the farm in our field in 

 a three-hour course." Yet I hazard the guess 

 that if you will examine the announcements 

 of courses of departments in this field in our 

 various agricultural colleges, you will find in 

 most of them a relatively large array of de- 

 tailed courses offered. Where this situation 

 prevails the student is forced to spend an ex- 

 cessive amount of time to get what I am firmly 

 convinced in many cases could be consolidated 

 into much fewer hours if the subject matter 



