September 26, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



435 



ization that the introductory course should be 

 offered as early in the college curriculum as 

 possible. 



Since an exceedingly small proportion of 

 the students continue the study of biology, 

 namely, those preparing for medicine or 

 teaching, and since the great majority leave 

 college without any further training or ac- 

 quaintance with the subject, the opinion seems 

 to prevail that the introductory course should 

 be a rounded one, that it should give a first- 

 hand acquaintance with living organisms, in 

 relation to their environment, an adequate 

 idea of the larger and fundamental problems 

 of the biologist and, above all, an idea of the 

 general methods used in biologic investiga- 

 tions. 



While there is considerable range of opinion 

 with respect to the time required for the 

 course, there is an undoubted tendency to 

 limit the course to five or six hours a week for 

 one academic year. 



Upon the broad lines just suggested there is 

 a general agreement, beyond these there is a 

 healthy divergence of opinion, particularly 

 upon the nature and the content of the course. 

 There has been an undoubted tendency away 

 from the narrow study of comparative mor- 

 phology, the standard course of a generation 

 ago, toward an increasing emphasis upon an 

 adequate understanding of fundamental bio- 

 logic phenomena, as we understand the term 

 to-day, of the unit of the organism, the cell, 

 the organism, and the fundamental processes 

 characteristic of living things in general. 

 To give such a course it has been found in- 

 creasingly expedient to study representatives 

 of animal and plant kingdoms. There are 

 very many eminent teachers who believe that, 

 on account of practical difiiculties, it were 

 better to use animal organisms only and to de- 

 velop the fundamental properties of living 

 things from zoologic types only. But these 

 teachers are in nearly every instance zoologists. 



The chief kinds of courses show consider- 

 able variation. There are courses like the 

 almost abandoned narrow comparative mor- 

 phology, others in which attention is di- 

 rected to the functioning of the mechanisms 



studied and others in which the emphasis 

 is placed upon the laws which living things 

 obey, and only sufiicient attention given to 

 the structures involved as will make the 

 understanding of these laws possible. Pro- 

 fessor Kofoid's course, as I understand it, 

 is one such course. This idea carried to its 

 extreme is illustrated in courses that follow 

 more or less closely the Jordan and Kellogg 

 evolution book. Where the endeavor is to 

 offer an abbreviated course usually covering 

 one semester and to give the student an idea 

 of fundamental principles a course somewhat 

 along the lines of Sedgwick and Wilson's 

 biology is followed. Professor Needham's 

 course in biology is too well known to need 

 extended comment. It is another fine con- 

 tribution and merits further trial. 



There can be no question but that the trend 

 of thought is in the direction of giving the 

 student a rounded and definite view of the 

 world of living things, that the student who 

 pursues the subject no further may carry 

 with him an adequate knowledge of the world 

 of living beings, and that the student who 

 intends to make a more intensive study of 

 the biologic sciences may have a sufficient 

 background for the choice of his electives as 

 his interest or needs may demand. 



With a changed viewpoint in the matter of 

 the scope of the course has come an increasing 

 appreciation of the value of the study of 

 living things. They are no longer thought 

 unworthy of serious study, to be left to teach- 

 ers of kindergartens and elementary schools. 

 It is no longer deemed necessary to depend 

 exclusively upon foul-smelling, often distorted 

 and discolored preserved specimens for an 

 understanding of a living organism. At the 

 last meeting of the representatives of the col- 

 leges of the Middle States and Maryland there 

 was a wholesome and surprising agreement on 

 the important place that living organisms 

 should hold in our biologic courses. 



With an appreciation of the desirability of 

 studying living organisms the importance of 

 local or well-known forms has become ap- 

 parent. The choice of a type has unfortu- 

 nately been too frequently determined by the 



