y'^ Proceedings of the Ohio State Academy of Science. 



and laboratory. Plant tissues are more easily manipulated than 

 animal tissues, and plant structures stand out more plainly in 

 dissection and microscopic study. Reproductive processes can 

 be studied more easily in plants than in animals. Plants stand in 

 closer relationship to the inorganic world than do animals, being 

 intermediate chemically and physiologically. Plant evolution has 

 taken a direction mainly different from animal evolution, so that 

 Botany has a special interest from the standpoint of racial de- 

 velopment. 



Whether man is a feeling rather than a thinking animal is 

 debatable. The child's curiosity indicates that he is thinking of 

 things about him. But we stifle thought and train the memory 

 and sensibiltities until he ceases tO' be curious. Then we try to 

 remedy the injury by allowing him to study one or more sciences. 

 In thought training and for other purposes, Biology has sufficient 

 value SO' that no student should go through college without a 

 year's course in Botany or Zoology. If man is a feeling rather 

 than a thinking being, so much more does he need the peculiar 

 training obtained from careful and accurate observation, the 

 close dealing with facts, the exercise of reasoning and judgment, 

 and the imparting of a painstaking, scientific spirit, which come 

 with biological training. But laboratories are expensive, and it is 

 difficult to handle large numbers of students in a bioligical 

 science ; therefore most teachers of Biology and most institutions 

 would be overtaxed, were all to take Botany or Zoology. Though 

 the procedure would be sound educationally, teachers oi biological 

 sciences do not, at present, long to have all students enrolled in 

 their classes. This would mean overtaxing teaching force and 

 equipment for many years. Nevertheless, we cannot refrain 

 from saying that if people studied these sciences more, there 

 would be less inaccuracy and exaggeration in our speaking and 

 writing, and more careful thinking and candid statement of fact. 

 In cultivating respect for facts and in remedying the proneness 

 to giving vent to feeling in inaccurate and exaggerated statement, 

 Botany has its value and deserves a larger place than it now has, 

 even in some colleges that have separate departments for this 

 science. 



