1876.] University Instruction in Botany. 291 
of young men whose talents and services could ill be spared 
have been driven to other branches of natural history. The 
great mistake seems to us to have been that it has been at- 
tempted to educate all who study botany as though they intended 
to become botanical specialists in the department of descriptive 
phenogamy, whereas not one in a thousand has such an inten- 
tion or desire. 
We would see the instruction in botany for the first year 
rather directed to give a good general view of the whole vege- 
table kingdom, than to enable the student to follow out specific 
analysis in any one department. We would not forget that 
botany is one of the divisions of biology ; we would, as far as pos- 
sible, examine plants in action, and would let the student devote 
his time for the first year to the examination of a few illustrations 
of the different types of vegetable life, from the highest to the 
lowest, without any attempt at teaching particular genera and 
Species. We would teach the student how to investigate for 
himself, and avoid imparting any encyclopedic knowledge. At 
the close of one year’s study the student would be in a condi- 
tion to know in which direction he prefers to work, and in his 
second and later years of study he could pursue more and more in 
detail the department which his own taste may dictate, not, how- 
ever, entirely neglecting others. We think it absolutely neces- 
sary that in the first year of study a general course should be 
pursued, in which the student should be obliged to think for him- 
self, and should not be allowed to depend on books. 
To enter into particulars, we should prefer something of this 
d: We suppose the college term to begin about the first of 
October and end the first of the following July, and that the 
student spends three hours a day for three days in the week in 
OCTOBER AND NOVEMBER. — One lecture a week. (A.) Il- 
lustrations of Palmella, Nostoc, Oseillaria, Desmids, Spirogyra, 
ete., to show the structure of the cell, and acquire facility in the 
use of the compound microscope ‘and in making preparations.: 
(B.) Myxomycetes, to examine the plasmodium. Nitella, to 
show the movements of protoplasm. 
(C.) Mucor Syzygites, to illustrate conjugation. 
(D.) Peronospora viticola, to show odspores and zoOspores, 
DECEMBER, JANUARY, AND FEBRUARY. — (A.) Basidiomy- 
