158 



which alone the human race may prosper. * * * A plan of 

 general education, therefore, which neglects botany neglects one 

 of the subjects which Herbert Spencer describes as having 

 'transcendent value.' " * 



Professor Lloyd's suggestive chapter on " Nature Study " is 

 especially pertinent at this time when Professor Armstrong of the 

 Mosely Educational Commission, sent from Great Britain to 

 study the American school system, has remarked, perhaps with 

 more justification than he has said some other things, that "The 

 nature study lessons I witnessed, when not specifically botanical or 

 zoological and scientific in character, were eminently superficial 

 and worthless." f The authors of " The Teaching of Biology" 

 would doubtless reply that any nature study lessons that are not 

 " scientific in character " are of necessity " worthless " and that 

 all nature study lessons that deserve the name, however simple 

 and elementary, should, of equal necessity, be eminently 

 " scientific in character." The " apparent failure of nature study 

 in some quarters " would be referred by them to the inefficiency 

 of the teachers and not to any lack of adaptability in the char- 

 acter of the subject matter. And it is to incite thought, dis- 

 crimination and "self-activity" on the part of those who are 

 charged with developing a scientific attitude of mind in the }-outh 

 of our schools that "The Teaching of Biology" has been 

 written. We predict that the book is destined to have an im- 

 portant influence in the direction desired by its authors. 



Marshall A. Howe. 



NEWS ITEMS 



Mr. Stewart II. Burnham is now a graduate assistant in botany 

 in Cornell University. 



Mr. K. W. D. Holway has been appointed assistant professor 

 of botany in the University of Minnesota. 



Mr. B. M. Everhart, well known by his association with Mr. 

 J. H. IJhs in studies of the American fungi died at West Chester, 

 Pennsylvania, on September 22, at the age of eighty-seven years. 



* I'. 73- 



fScience II, 20: 132. 29 Jl. 1904. 



