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introduction of more logical, useful and illuminating topics, ex- 

 periments and methods, in the fitting of science better to the 

 growing mind, in local floras and the natural history of common 

 plants, in ways for better collation and diffusion of knowledge. 

 After all, it is the spirit of the investigation that is the matter 

 of value to the teacher, not the results. A contemplation of the 

 status of much of the investigation put forth by busy teachers 

 somehow seems to suggest a saying of one of our senior botanists, 

 who was in his youth somewhat of a botanical explorer, and 

 always a genial wit. Apropos of the making of bread in camp 

 he has been heard to remark "it may not result in very good 

 bread, but it's great for cleaning the hands." In investigation 

 as elsewhere, results are most surely and economically won by 

 experts, selected, trained and devoted to that work. The college 

 teacher would do better not to waste his strength on a field in 

 which he can be little better than an amateur, especially when 

 there lies open another in which he can himself be an expert, 

 and that is in educational-scientific investigation. 



From this which the university ought not to do, I turn now to 

 things which it leaves undone. It is not giving to those who are 

 to be college teachers certain knowledge and training which are 

 indispensable to good teaching. Thus, it does not insist that 

 they shall know the common facts about the familiar plants 

 around them. The old type of botanical course, consisting in the 

 study of the morphology and identification of the higher plants, 

 is gone forever, not because it was not good, but because the 

 expansion of knowledge has given us something still better. Yet 

 the knowledge involved in the old course is indispensable to 

 every teaching botanist, and I would have a requirement made 

 that no person could be recommended as a competent botanical 

 teacher for a college until he had spent at least two summers of 

 active field work on the critical study of some flora. Again, 

 most of our university-trained teachers know nothing more of 

 the historical or biographical phases of the sciences than they 

 may have picked up incidentally. Yet for purposes of teaching, 

 a knowledge of the history of the science itself, and of its rela- 

 tions to other great matters, is vastly important, in part for the 



