150 
TENTH REPORT. 
we can examine fully, and generalize from them. The selected forms are types 
and their selection is necessary to enable us to generalize. 
My fourth proposition is derived from the third. Economy of effort is 
obtained by comparing the second type studied with the first. It will be 
remembered in our previous illustration that the elementary type,' or first 
form studied was examined as an individual. There is no economy of effort 
if the second type is studied de novo in the same way. Here is the criticism 
upon the kind of teaching often called type-study, but which has no claim to 
the name. The study of an individual is not type study, unless related 
individuals are studied, whose relations to it make it a type. This, I take it, 
is the source of most of the criticisms made upon type study, and it was to 
deprive it of the name improperly applied that this paper was prepared. 
The second thing must be studied by comparison with the first. Ordinarily, 
its individual characters need not be noticed, but only the specific and 
generic characters. That is, the characters that are like or unlike those 
selected for study in the first. 
The former practice in beginning the study of botany was to learn lessons 
from Gray’s botany, and after they had been well memorized, then to go to the 
flowers, and apply to them the name of parts that we had learned in the 
lessons. I have a profound respect for Gray’s botany, but not so much for 
the teachers who used it in that way. They failed entirely to grasp the 
significance of type study. 
Suppose that we decide that it is a proper part of botany to study flower 
structure. If one of the buttercups is available, it will serve well as a type. 
A short time will suffice to fix the fundamental characters of this flower. 
The evening primrose in the- next lesson will embody the same essential 
elements of flower structure with modifications, the most important of which 
is the fact that the ovary is compound. The compound ovary is about the 
only thing in the flower that must be learned new, and this is learned because 
it is a difference from the type form of a flower previously studied. A study 
of the Jimpson weed introduces to the monopetalous corolla, a clover to the 
papilionaceous corolla, diadelphous stamens and the clustered head. Other 
ideas in flower structure can be simply exemplified by a proper selection of 
types, so that ten lessons treated in the most economical way will give a 
student a better idea of flower structure and plant morphology than we 
obtained in three months in the old way. 
It was formerly the custom, now happily abandoned, in studying flowers 
to have a series of blank forms with many descriptive words, and the pupil 
was expected to underscore the words that fitted the flower he had in hand. 
You will see that in this process each flower was studied by the same pattern 
that the first one was. so there was no economy of mental effort, although 
there might be a saving of ink in consequence of not having to write the 
descriptive words. 
By the use of properly selected type forms, it is easily possible to study 
a dozen related individuals with no more effort than it took to study the one 
used as the original type, and do it as well. I have often observed that a class 
in the first year of a high school course will learn as much about a cricket, 
see just as many characteristics and see them just as well in two days as they 
saw in the first specimen studied, a grasshopper or a beetle, in five weeks. 
A common explanation by unthoughtful people is that the powers of obser- 
vation are cultivated by the study of natural science to such an extent that 
they become able to see more in a given time. The powers of observation, as 
a reason for studying natural science has been so much overworked that 1 
