670 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXII. No. i 



Carpophyceae (Higher Algae) 3,210 



Carpomyceteae (Higher Fungi) 63,700 



Bryophyta (Mossworts) 16,600 



Pteridophyta (Ferns) 2,500 



Calamophyta (Calamites) 20 



Lepidophyta (Lycopods) 900 



Cycadophyta (Cycads) 140 



Strobilophyta (Conifers) 450 



Anthophyta (Flowering Plants) ....110,000 



About eigliteen years ago Saccardo made 

 some rather careful estimates of the numbers 

 of species of plants, and a translation of his 

 paper made by Dr. Eoscoe Pound was pub- 

 lished in the American Naturalist for Feb- 

 ruary, 1894. In that paper Saccardo makes a 

 number of very interesting and ingenious cal- 

 culations and estimates and reaches the con- 

 clusion that at that time there were known 

 nearly 174,000 species of plants, distributed 

 as follows: 



Algae 12,178 



Fungi (including Lichens) 45,203 



Liverworts and Mosses 7,650 



Equis, Marsil, Lueopod 565 



Ferns 2,819 



Phanerogams 105,231 



173,706 



Upon these figures he then estimates that 

 " the flora of the world when it is completely 

 enough known will consist of at least 385,000 

 species, that is 250,000 fungi, and 135,000 

 species of the other groups." Adding 15,000 

 as the probable number of new species that it 

 may reasonably be presumed will be found out- 

 side of the fungi, and we have 400,000 as the 

 grand total of plant species in the world. 

 These he estimates may require 150 years of 

 work by botanists, in other words " our remote 

 grandchildren " may be confronted by this 

 vast array of species. 



In his paper Saccardo contrasts these later 

 numbers with earlier ones, as follows: Theo- 

 phrastus, about 2,200 years ago, knew about 

 500 species of plants; Dioscorides 1,900 years 

 ago knew 600 species; Bauhin 260 years ago 

 knew 5,266 ; Linne 150 years ago knew about 

 8,551; DeCandolle (in 1819) reckoned about 

 30,000 phanerogams alone, and this was in- 

 creased by Lindley (in 1845) to nearly 80,000 



and by Duchartre (in 1885) to 100,000; the 

 latter at the same time estimated the crypto- 

 gams at 25,000. 



HOW TO TEACH BOTANY 



That there is need of improvement in our 

 teaching of botany scarcely needs arguing, es- 

 pecially when we consider the teaching in the 

 high schools of the country at large. In fact 

 when we think of the thousands of young 

 people who yearly enter the classes in general 

 botany in the colleges and universities, and 

 then consider the annual hunt by heads of bo- 

 tanical departments for men (or women) who 

 are prepared to fill even minor places as 

 teachers or, investigators, we are sometimes 

 tempted to question whether any of us know 

 how to teach our science aright. Upon the latter 

 point the writer would like to take part in a 

 serious Seminar Conference in Minneapolis 

 during the meeting of the American Associa- 

 tion for the Advancement of Science, and he 

 here suggests to the ofiicers of Section G that 

 they make provision for such a seminar on 

 one of the evenings at some convenient place. 

 So, leaving the question of the apparent in- 

 efficiency of college and university teaching, 

 every teacher who has had to evaluate and 

 build upon the botany of the high schools 

 realizes very fully that there is very much 

 poor teaching of the subject which makes it 

 in every way fruitless. Too often after a half 

 year or a year spent in the study the pupil has 

 acquired neither culture nor training there- 

 from ; instead, he has a mass of unrelated and 

 rather dimly outlined botanical facts whose 

 incoherency and vagueness preclude any men- 

 tal training, and whose lack of relation to the 

 daily life of the community makes impossible 

 the suggestion that they may contribute to 

 the general education, that is the culture, of 

 the pupil. 



Now it is to remedy this state of things in 

 botanical pedagogy that Professor Ganong, 

 well known as a most successful teacher, has 

 brought out a new and enlarged edition of his 

 " Teaching Botanist " (Macmillan) a book of 

 somewhat more than four hundred pages. 

 In these he discusses " The Place of the Sci- 

 ences in Education, and of Botany among the 



