506 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXII. No. 5G4. 



offering of agricultural subjects in the high 

 schools, and that advantage will be taken of 

 this opportunity by a considerable number of 

 pupils. Several of the schools have shown an 

 interest in agricultural work anfl desired to 

 introduce it, but have been deterred by the 

 necessity of meeting the requirements in the 

 subjects credited. 



A somewhat conditional victory in this di- 

 rection has also been gained in New York 

 state. There the state regents of education 

 determine what subjects are to be credited in 

 the Tegents' examinations for entrance to col- 

 leges or universities in the state, and agricul- 

 ture has not been included in the list.. Nat- 

 urally no other subjects would be offered at 

 high schools except as electives, and pupils 

 fitting for college would not be likely to take 

 such elective studies with no chance for credit. 

 This has handicapped the college of agricul- 

 ture at Cornell in its efforts to extend the 

 teaching of nature study and elementary agri- 

 'culture in the public schools, and that institu- 

 tion has brought its influence to bear upon 

 the regents of education. At a meeting held 

 last winter the regents decided to allow credits 

 in the regular high school courses for nature 

 study and elementary agriculture, provided 

 the courses in these subjects were so prepared 

 as to show educational values comparable with 

 other subjects now recognized. Since this 

 announcement the faculty of the college of 

 agriculture has been at work on the syllabi 

 of courses in the subjects under consideration, 

 with a view to securing their approval by the 

 board of regents. In that case it is expected 

 that several of the high schools will offer 

 elective courses in agriculture, which will en- 

 able them the better to prepare students for 

 the higher agricultural work of the college. 



It was the contention at the meeting of the 

 Association of American Agricultural Colleges 

 and Experiment Stations at Des Moines last 

 fall, that the public schools should lead up to 

 the agricultural colleges as they now do to 

 colleges of arts and sciences; and President 

 Jesse explained that in Missouri ' we are risk- 

 ing our entire future on the doctrine that the 

 college of agriculture should rest on the public 



high school, and we are going to make the 

 public high school agricultural so far as it 

 ought to be agricultural.' The recognition of 

 agriculture as a teaching subject and as hav- 

 ing an educational value will do much to 

 bring about this desired end. It will bring 

 elementary and advanced work in agriculture 

 closer together, and will articulate the agri- 

 cultural college and the high school as they 

 have not been before. — The Experiment Sta- 

 tion Record. 



BOTANICAL NOTES. 

 MORPHOLOGY OF THE EAR OF INDIAN CORN. 



Mr. E. G. Montgomery, of the University 

 of jSTebraska, in a paper soon to be published, 

 offers a new explanation of the morphology 

 of the 'ear' of Indian corn {Zea mays). 

 Briefly stated it is that the ear corresponds to 

 the central spike of the tassel. This normally 

 bears from four to eleven rows of paired 

 spikelets. In the staminate inflorescence one 

 of the spikelets in each pair is sessile, and 

 the other stalked, but in their transformation 

 to the pistillate structure the pedicel of the 

 stalked spikelet becomes shortened more and 

 more until it is sessile, thus forming a double 

 row of kernel-producing spikelets, and account- 

 ing for the fact that the ear always has an 

 even number of rows. Hermaphrodite flowers 

 are common in such transformed spikelets, 



A NEW BOTANICAL TEXT-BOOK. 



Under the name of ' A College Text-book 

 of Botany ' Professor Atkinson has brought 

 out (Holt & Co.) an enlargement and consid- 

 erable improvement of his ' Elementary Bot- 

 any ' (1898). In it the author has attempted 

 to present an outline of the science in a form 

 sufiiciently condensed to be readily covered by 

 college students in the time usually allotted to 

 botany in the better class of colleges and uni- 

 versities. The book differs from most of 

 those hitherto prepared in the sequence of 

 topics, beginning with physiology, to which 

 thirteen chapters (135 pages) are assigned. 

 Following this are twenty-four chapters (213 

 pages) on the morphology of plants. Eight 

 chapters (115 pages) are given to ' Plant Mem- 

 bers in Relation to their Environment,' fol- 



