264 ELEMENTS OF BOTANY. 



on the board, or in a typewritten copy, to which the pupils may have 

 free access during study-hours. 



Frequent and unexpected examinations of the note-books by the 

 teacher will do more than anything else to make pupils exact and 

 painstaking in their record of work done. Much importance should 

 be given to the valuation of the note-book in judging of the owner's 

 progress in his work. 



It is an unpardonable fault in the teacher to allow the notes to 

 become mechanical, and it is therefore, in the writer's opinion, 

 inadmissible to allow any set form of record to be followed through- 

 out the study of any tissue or organ. The observations of the puiDil 

 may well be grouped in an orderly fashion during his first studies of 

 leaves, for example, by following in the record some such form as 

 that given in any of the best plant-analysis blanks, but it would be 

 absurd to stretch the learner on such a Procrustes' bed more than 

 once. It will go far toward training the pupil into a scientific habit 

 of mind if he is required in his notes and in his recitations to 

 distinguish clearly the sources of his knowledge. He should be 

 able to state whether a given piece of information was derived from 

 his own experiment or personal study of an object or a phenomenon, 

 from an experiment performed by the teacher in the presence of the 

 class, from outside reading, or from study of the text-book. Both 

 note-books should throughout present constant evidence of the care 

 with which their owner has kept account of the way in W'hich he 

 became possessed of the subject-matter which he enters in them. 

 Drawings copied from the blackboard or from any book or photo- 

 graph should be carefully labeled in such a way as to distinguish 

 them from original ones. 



