MICHIGAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 
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always feel suspicious of the knowledge or the sincerity of anyone who gives 
that as a reason why natural science should be studied. The power to ob- 
serve comes largely from the related facts previously known. 
My fifth proposition is that type study is almost universal in its applica- 
tion. It is a conspicuous feature in the scientific method, and is capable 
of application with all its advantages wherever the scientific method can be 
applied. I have been using illustrations drawn from the classificatory 
sciences, but it is now being applied to geography, to sociology and to 
almost every other subject. In fact, type study is not a new thing just 
discovered; it is a very natural thing and has been employed deliberately 
many years. It is only recently that we have awakened to its full significance, 
and have begun to inquire into its real merits and to study the laws that 
determine its use. 
There is one other consideration that ought to be noticed. Type study 
presupposes that an individual is the center of correlation for all the char- 
acters that pertain to it. Now suppose that we had all the observed char- 
acters of one type written in a vertical column under the name of the type. 
Beside it we have the name of another individual or type with all of its char- 
acters written under its name. Similarly suppose that we have the observed 
characters of several or many types written under their respective heads. 
Now shall we study our tables vertically or horizontally? Shall we make 
the type individual the center of correlation or shall one character expressed 
in the table the basis of our study? Shall we study how the bumblebee 
lives and moves and has its being, what organs it works with and what kind 
of a creature it is, or shall we study how animals defend themselves and 
notice thebumble bee’s sting as a defensive organ? The latter practice is 
directly opposed to type study. The advantages of type study are so pro- 
nounced that I have no hesitation in saying that an individual ought to 
be made the basis of study, but in consequence of the natural disposition of 
people to run after strange gods I believe that many people overlook its 
advantages and try to make an abstract principle the center of study. I grant 
you that these general principles must be known, but they become known so 
easily and with such great educational benefit when several types are studied 
and compared that it seems to me a serious matter to abandon type study and 
make slight generalizations already worked out, the basis of study. Such 
things are very well in cheap magazines, newspaper science and popular 
lectures, but they can never constitute the core of a scientific education. 
The earliest form of botany that obtained a recognized place in the second- 
ary curriculum was plant analysis, epigrammatically characterized by an 
eminent botanist as having no more relation to botany than a collection of 
postage stamps has to geography. It was succeeded by a kind of cross 
section botany, which is still the bogie man of epigrammatic critics. Then 
we had a severe attack of root pressure botany, to be succeeded in turn bv 
some plant relation botany and some plant society botany. A simple calcu- 
lation will show that about every five years, a new modification of the subject 
is proposed and urged with all the fiery enthusiasm of an educational agita- 
tion. And all the time, the processes of learning have been constant, child 
nature has been the same, and psychological laws as immutable as gravitation. 
When shall we cease to look to subjects, and search in psychology for the 
basis of our educational processes. I believe I have shown that type study 
as properly understood conforms closely to the psychological processes 
involved in learning, and may safely be recommended as a pedagogical 
basis for the study of botany and geology. 
