294 University Instruction in Botany. [May, 
themselves. If a shirk is a nuisance in the lecture-room, he is 
tenfold a nuisance in the laboratory, where he wastes not only 
time, but room and working materials. 
Were the courses in our colleges elective, in the true sense of 
the word, this difficulty of the crowding of laboratories by stu- 
dents who are not in earnest would not arise. But even where 
the botanical course is nominally elective, there is a certain com- 
pulsion employed in the form of check-lists or compulsory recita- 
tions. As it is, we see no other way out of the difficulty than to 
divide a botanical class of any size into two sections ; one includ- 
ing those who are willing to work, who should have laboratory 
privileges ; the other including the shirks, who should be re- 
quired only to attend lectures and recitations, and who should, of 
course, be marked on a lower scale. There is no good reason 
why a college should provide laboratory room and equipments 
for those whose principal object in going to the laboratory is to 
try to worm out of the instructor the questions of the next ex- 
amination paper. There is another class of well-meaning but 
exasperating students, birds of passage we must call them, who 
have usually not more than fifteen or twenty minutes to spend 
at any one time in the laboratory. We see no reason why, if a 
student actually has no time at his disposal, he should be allowed 
to throw a laboratory into confusion by a series of abrupt en- 
trances and as abrupt departures. 
We have purposely omitted any lectures on economic botany 
from our proposed course. However useful a study it may be 
for apothecaries, it is entirely unadapted to college students. 
They might just as well try to learn so many pages out of the 
dictionary. It would be very desirable to remember the names 
and orders of a large number of useful and injurious plants. 
But no one ever does who is not obliged to lecture twice a year 
on the subject, and even then he is compelled to refresh his mem- 
` ory by frequent perusal of certain books whose titles we will not 
mention, for fear that it may be said that we are betraying Pt 
fessional secrets. ‘ 
In Germany the botanical professors generally give a princi- 
pal course of lectures, which is attended by those who are pay- 
ing particular attention to the science, and a shorter accessory 
course, on some limited subject, which is attended by those 
who simply wish to know what is going on in the botanical 
world, without making any detailed study. It seems to us that 
something similar would be advisable in this country. There 18 
