IN BOTANICAL EDUCATION 7 



better to condense into one the above-described courses of the 

 second and third years, so that Physiology may be reached earlier. 

 It may be objected that such a course gives too much routine 

 work, and that after two, or at most three, years of regular courses 

 the student had better be given some original problem in which 

 his powers of investigation may be cultivated. Aside from the 

 great inherent difficulty of securing investigation from under- 

 graduates, with all the demands upon their time and attention, 

 it is also a fact that the validity of this, objection depends upon 

 badness in the quality of the teaching; for if the teaching be 

 of the right sort, then all of the courses of the four years will be, 

 from the student's point of view, investigation. From the very 

 first week of the elementary course, all of the work of all of the 

 courses should be a series of subjectively original investigations, 

 in which every new thing is brought before the student as a 

 problem to be solved through proper inductive processes by 

 his own efforts, aided by wise advice and criticism. Thus the 

 investigation spirit should grow throughout the student's course, 

 while at the same time he is obtaining a truly proportioned and 

 fairly complete knowledge and training in the principal divisions 

 of the science, giving him the very best preparation for real (or 

 objective) investigation in the university. Again, it may seem 

 that the proposed course is too inelastic, too mechanical, for the 

 good of advanced students, and especially for those of marked 

 originality. But it must be remembered that the great majority 

 of students are best treated, as they prefer to be, by a rather 

 rigid system of drill, in which definiteness, decision, and authority 

 are predominant; while it is surely desirable that all students 

 should be trained in the substance of the accumulated knowl- 

 edge of the race, and in approved methods of manipulation, 

 before being set to find out or to do something new. It is entirely 

 possible for the framework or plan of a course to be rigid, while 

 its clothing of details is plastic under the master's hand. Upon 

 the whole the best system is that which, while rigid enough to 

 secure the drill of the ordinary run of humanity, is yet elastic 

 enough not to hamper the evolution of the occasional genius. 



