PREFACE 
texts. One or more of each of these texts should be in the 
laboratory. This feature of the course is considered very 
important, since the student thus not only gets the best writ- 
ten on any particular subject, within his range of knowledge; 
but he also necessarily becomes acquainted with a number of 
authors and consequently gets a broader view of the subject 
than he would if only a single text were used. A course con- 
ducted along these lines should be accompanied by occasional 
simple descriptive talks and numerous quizzes. Students 
frequently fail to understand the significance of many plant 
structures and the meaning of experiments unless they are 
carefully questioned about them. Undigested laboratory 
work has but very little value. 
While these laboratory directions are intended primarily 
for college work, they have proved satisfactory in the hands of 
tenth grade students, and have been used with slight modifi- 
cations 1a a course given yearly during the past five years. 
Judging from results in this work I believe this method 
would prove both successful and economic in all biological 
work in high schools. The department library can be well 
equipped and maintained if each student contributes about 
half the cost of an ordinary text in these subjects. And after 
the course is well organized, certain students can be appointed 
to take charge of the library and thus relieve the instructor 
of extra work. 
8. O. M. 
