THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 
117 
flower and a new name, yet he learned unconsciously its 
habitat, could tell you where to look for others like it and 
could recognize others as far as he could see them. 
Then came the days of the microscope and stains and 
paraffin, etc., and instead of sending the pupils out into the 
woods, we had to make sections for them and show them cells 
and they had to draw and describe from the microscope. Now 
while the cell is the unit of structure, and while it might seem 
that there would be the logical place to begin the study of 
biology, yet a knowledge of cells is not what pupils of high 
school age should know about first. It is more important 
that any one should know first the place where liverworts 
grow and how they look when growing and where one may 
expect to find them than to know how great a differentiation 
has taken place among its cells or what is its life history. 
I have known college students who have worked out the 
whole of the life history of Marchantia and had never seen 
the plant growing in its native haunts. I remember well my 
experience with Nostoc. I worked it out in the laboratory 
and thought I was well acquainted with it, but it was long after 
I had finished it before I found it and when I did find it, I did 
not know what it was. 
But this is not such a bad thing among college or uni- 
versity students, for they have or ought to have a large back- 
ground of scientific observation upon which to base their 
laboratory work, even if it be on plants other than those on 
which they are working, but for high school pupils of the first 
year it does make a difference for we must remember that on 
account of their extreme youth for one thing they have no 
background upon which to work and in the larger towns and 
cities they have but little opportunity to learn anything about 
plants and annimals from actual observation. 
It is more important first that high school pupils should 
be able to know mosses and ferns and be able to know where 
