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favorable background it offers for the projection of our present- 

 day knowledge, and in part for the purpose of placing the dram- 

 atic, heroic and humanistic aspects of the science at the disposal 

 of the teacher. Again, the teacher may go forth from the univei- 

 sity without any other than the most fragmentary knowledge of 

 laboratory administration, although there is a rapidly developing 

 technique of efficient and economical management of laboratory 

 construction, furniture, apparatus, supplies, materials, manipula- 

 tion ; and the lack of any training in these is one reason why our 

 science is so often disgraced, and our influence weakened, by 

 slovenly botanical laboratories. Again, the teacher takes up 

 the instruction of young people without any knowledge whatever 

 of the results, very valuable, all imperfect though they still are, 

 which have been won in the scientific study of the psychology of 

 the adolescent mind. And finally he receives no training in the 

 collation and exposition of scientific knowledge, a subject of such 

 importance that I-shall speak of it in a moment apart. Training 

 in investigation he also needs, of course, and that he now gets 

 with ample efficiency. We need a standardization of preparation 

 for college and high-school teaching of the sciences, with appro- 

 priate titles or degrees. We are as yet far enough from such a 

 condition, but not wholly without some progress to record. For 

 one university, Chicago, in its school of education, has a depart- 

 ment of botany and natural history, administered, by the way, 

 by one of our members and colleagues whose accomplishments 

 in the past give promise of great service to come. 



But now once more I wish to qualify a little. While I believe 

 that a training in common knowledge of plants, in the history 

 of our science, in laboratory administration, in the psychology 

 of youth, in the collation and exposition of knowledge, as well 

 as in investigation, is indispensable to the best botanical teaching, 

 and should be included compulsorily in the training of botanical 

 teachers, I do not blame the universities for not providing such 

 instruction, nor am I sure that it is a correct or economical 

 university function. But there is one thing of which I am sure, 

 and it is this, that there is a place in which such training is 

 practicable and wholly appropriate and that place is the graduate 

 department of the college. 



