159 



so rare as to escape common notice, there are about 68 species 

 of trees common in some part of the valley, often throughout it. 

 A short popular account of most of these, illustrated by lantern- 

 slides, aimed to bring out the salient features of the different 

 kinds, and to draw attention to their principal economic or 

 cultural uses." 

 Adjourned. 



Percy Wilson, 

 Secretary 



OF INTEREST TO TEACHERS * 



By W. F. Ganong 



Some Reflections upon Botanical Education in America 

 I come now to the fourth of the reasons why our science teach- 

 ing is defective, and that is the most vital of all. Our method of 

 training teachers is wrong. I believe it is true that in general our 

 educational advances work down from above — from university to 

 college, from college to high school and from high school to the 

 grades; and in a general way each of these institutions is the 

 finishing school for teachers of the grade below. Now the work 

 of our universities Is for the most part admirable in every 

 way, but they are not good training schools for college teachers. 

 One of the greatest of our college presidents lately remarked that 

 the principal obstacle in the way of making a college what it ought 

 to be is the difficulty nowadays of securing the right kind of 

 teachers. "We have to take them as the universities supply 

 them, ' ' he said, "and then make them into good college teachers 

 afterwards." The defects of the universities in this respect are 

 two-fold. First they are training students only for their own 

 kind of activity, in which everything centers, very properl}^ in 

 research; and second, they are omitting to teach divers matters 

 very essential for the college teacher to know. 



That our universities make research the central feature and 

 great leading method of their training of graduate students is 



*Adflress of the retiring president of the Botanical Society of America, delivered 

 at Boston, December 28, 1909. Reprinted by permission from Science, March 4, 

 1910. See Torreya for May and June. 



