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a very successful teacher of high school botany, and second 
because I find in his text as published the method of approach 
which makes his work successful. It seems to me that in a 
review of the length of Dr. Gager's—three pages—the good 
points of Mr. Payne's book deserve more than a six line para- 
graph, and I hope in the following discussion to show reason for 
this opinion. 
Dr. Gager's review begins with a criticism to which it seems 
to me strong objection may be raised in point of fact. 
This relates to the general plan of the text in which Dr. Gager 
finds as one of the main weaknesses of the book “that botany 
is continually correlated with practical gardening, farming, and 
bacteriology.” And further, to quote the reviewer, “ Undoubt- 
edly the movement to introduce the study of the principles of 
agriculture into secondary schools is a movement in the right 
direction, but why agricultural matter should be eternally mixed 
in with botany until the latter science loses all semblance of its 
real self, it is difficult to comprehend." 
It appears to the writer that Dr. Gager's objections to corre- 
lating theoretical and practical plant study must have arisen 
from a misapprehension of the purpose of Mr. Payne in such 
correlation. One of the main difficulties in teaching elementary 
botany in high schools lies in finding an approach to the student 
which shall have interest for him, and ready connection with his 
previous knowledge. The experimental method of Mr. Payne's 
text-book is admirable for securing the pupil's interest, and 
the continual references to what may be spoken of as the applied 
phases of botany serve to clinch the facts in the pupil's mind as 
well as to explain the reasons for many common phenomena 
and their relation to plant life. Апа further the only facts about 
plants possessed by the ordinary city boy relate to their uses as 
food, drugs, lumber, clothing, etc. A country boy has additional 
knowledge of living plants and agricultural processes. Mr. 
Payne has endeavored to make useful this fund of knowledge by 
frequent references to the uses of plants and their culture in 
connection with the purely botanical study of the structure and 
function of typical plants. It is, of course, not to be expected 
