APPENDIX 

 LABORATORY SUGGESTIONS 



1. The Relation of the Descriptive Work to that of the Laboratory and Field. 



— If time were of no consideration, it would perhaps be desirable for each student 

 to get all his information concerning animals at first hand. Even under this 

 most favorable assumption, however, his information would have a detached and 

 unrelated quality which can only be corrected by lectures or textbook. This 

 indicates the author's view of the purpose of the body of the text. It is to con- 

 serve the pupil's time and to unify his own necessarily scattered observations in 

 such a way as to give them a vital and permanent interest. For this end the 

 practical work in each phylum of animals should precede the descriptive and not 

 be used merely to illustrate it. The textbook instruction and library references 

 should have a much wider scope and fuller illustrative detail than is possible 

 in the laboratory. 



2. The Nature of the Practical Work. — Personally the author has little sym- 

 pathy with the sentiment, so much in evidence in past years, that the most bizarre 

 and superficially interesting phenomena are the ones most likely to lead to good 

 educational results. These may be well enough in their place, but their best 

 possible place when not abused is only to heighten interest in the more important 

 relations and phenomena of animal life. The animal furnishes interesting and 

 important facts in two essential relations: (i) the internal, in connection with which 

 we are concerned equally with the fundamental structure and with its relation to 

 the work to be done by the organism; and (2) the external, in which we are in- 

 terested in this same work done by the parts of the organism, but in relation to 

 the conditions on the outside of the animal. Physiology is thus the connecting 

 link between morphology and ecology. The exercises of this book have been 

 arranged in the main to lead the student to see first what the animal types do; 

 secondly, the relation of this activity to the outside world; and thirdly, the more 

 important structures by which this relation is maintained. The practical work 

 should then be (l) physiological, which involves both the field and the laboratory; 

 (2) ecological, chiefly in the field; and (3) morphological, chiefly in the laboratory. 

 In each case the student should be caused to take the attitude of answering 

 questions, preferably of his own asking, rather than of verifying descriptions. 

 The laboratory outlines seek to raise questions rather than to supply answers, and 

 to suggest topics of value rather than to exhaust the subject. The best possible outline 

 is that which pupil and teacher construct together. 



3. The Order of Work and the Time to be Given (see table). — The author has 

 arranged the matter in the book as it appears to him it should be presented if 

 the various organisms were always available when needed, a condition which 

 every teacher knows to be contrary to fact. Everything considered, the author 

 thinks the best results may be had by beginning the year's work in the spring term 

 and finishing it in the autumn term of the next year. No arrangement of courses 



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