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Cycas. So, too, the fact that the common bean is a highly 

 useful plant and Sedum or Trillium is not would still leave the 

 bean flower much the poorest of the three with which to begin the 

 study of floral structures. 



"A still more radical phase of the movement toward economic 

 biology appears in the demand for lessons on all sorts of topics 

 bearing on horticulture and farming, from injurious insects to 

 plant breeding. Doubtless in some country high schools a good 

 deal of such work can be made thoroughly interesting and profit- 

 able. And in any schools such matter, in very moderate 

 amounts, may properly be assigned for supplementary reading. 

 Leaving out business and other technical courses, however, when 

 one begins to make economic consideration the measure of edu- 

 cational values he begins to pile up absurdities. As soon as the 

 teachers of geography, history and geometry are willing to bend 

 most of their respective efforts toward instruction regarding 

 commercial routes, the alternation of periods of activity and de- 

 pression in the world's business, and mensuration, it will be time 

 for biology teachers to consider favorably corresponding pseudo- 

 utilitarian innovations. But if the most valuable crop that any 

 country can produce is intelligent men it must follow that any 

 kind of study which is preeminently suited to cultivate habits 

 of careful observation and orderly thinking in school children is 

 especially important. Then that kind of biology which gives 

 young people some adequate conception — partly obtained from 

 their own field and laboratory studies — of the animal and plant 

 inhabitants of the earth, is better worth while than that which 

 primarily leads to more abundant hay, grain, butter and pork 

 making. In other words, we can develop the faculties of a boy 

 faster and further (and therefore do more for the world) by setting 

 him to work on the structure and functions of the corn plant 

 than by making him count and weigh the kernels of a half dozen 

 ears of as many improved varieties of corn. Such counting and 

 weighing, unless they form part of an extended, systematic in- 

 vestigation carried on by the student, have no more educational 

 value than keeping tally of the loads of coal sent out by a fuel 

 company. 



