Proceedings of the Ohio State Acadciny of Science. 75 



next. Consequently, the teacher may feel more at liberty to fol- 

 low his own inclinations after the first year; and the student will 

 not suffer the great injury incurred by improper methods at the 

 outset, for he will now have some pegs on which to hang his 

 facts. No teacher can hope to give more than a general out- 

 line of botanical science in a first course ; so nothing is gained 

 and much is lost by overcrowding these courses. We only wish 

 to insist further that the first course is by far the most important 

 one and should receive a large amount of attention from the 

 head of the department. Turning beginners over to inexperienced 

 instructors to the exclusion of a considerable amount of atten- 

 tion from the man at the head is to be condemned as bad 

 padagogics and very unfair to the student. 



There is no great difficulty in getting reckations on what 

 is given in text-books or what is said in lectures, even without 

 any experience vvith plants in the laboratory, the greenhouse, or 

 even in the field. However, the student, though able to do this, 

 has no real knowledge of the plants about which he has only read 

 or heard, until his botanical imagination is developed by the study 

 of plants themselves, when he can read and listen to matter 

 pertaining to unknown plants with profit, afterwards widening 

 his experience by direct observation so far as possible at un- 

 explored points and using his imagination, aided by descriptions 

 and figures, wherever observation is impossible. So the method 

 in advanced work may be very different from that employed in 

 first courses ; and the teacher should guard against over-estimat- 

 ing the grasp that his beginners have on his science and em- 

 ploying methods adapted only to those who are well grounded in 

 Botany. The only safe way is to assume that students who 

 have not had college Botany or have had only a hodgepodge 

 course know next to nothing about plants. First steps should 

 be taken slowly to gain time for rapid progress after the founda- 

 tion is laid. Haste at first usually means a slow, unsatisfactory 

 bewildering, and unprofitable finish. 



Beginning with text-book or lecture is much easier for the 

 teacher than the method outlined above. One who understands 

 his subject can instruct most comfortably by pouring out orally 



