171 
In other institutions there is an even stronger tendency toward making the agri- 
cultural course like any other college course, with simply a veneer of agriculture, 
perhaps in the last two years. The students are taught everything aboul agriculture, 
but no agriculture. This tendency is, to my mind, utterly deplorable. If there is 
not educational stamina in agriculture enough to develop an effective course in which 
agriculture holds the fundamental and most prominent place from the beginning to 
the end. then the whole system of agricultural education should he gives up. 
lint may there not be a way <>f securing for the agricultural curriculum a funda- 
mental course of high educational value, which at the same time will not detract 
from the unity of the whole curriculum? J believe that it is possible for the 
botanist to develop a course in agricultural botany capable of taking as prominent a 
place in agriculture as is held by mat hematics in engineering and that w ithout detract- 
ing from the unity of the whole course, but instead adding to it. This is a daring 
proposition, especially when we remember how relatively insignificant is the present 
development of botany in the agricultural colleges. Yei. is the botanical course, as 
at present developed, deserving of any greater prominence than it has'.' This ques- 
tion is exceedingly difficult to answer, since there has been no public expression of 
the botany course in the agricultural college, either in the shape of a text-book, or 
even a general discussion of method. If we look to the general botanical texts now 
in print, our answer must certainly be negative. 
Botanical teaching in America has developed along three lines. For our present 
purposes we need consider as examples only the books containing laboratory 
directions. While some of the text-books — e. g., those of Gray and of Bessey — have 
profoundly influenced teaching, they are not as definite exponents of method as the 
lal x tratory manuals. 
First in order was developed the course which is principally devoted to the Beed 
plants and may lead to the analysis of plants. The most definite expression of this 
school is Setchell's Laboratory Practice for Beginners. 
The second is the course which consists of type studies, beginning with the 
protophytes; hence devoted almost exclusively to the cry ptogan is. This method has 
received its most typical treatment in Campbell's Structural and Systematic Botany. 
The third, which might be termed the impressionistic, method in botany, is based 
upon ecology; it has been thoroughly exploited in Coulter's text-books, but has 
found its most definite expression in a little known pamphlet by C. H. Robison, 
entitled Field Studies of Some Common Plants. 
.Many recent text-books are combinations or compromises between these methods, 
e. g., those of Bergen and Leavitt and the pedagogical discussions of ( ianong. Perhaps 
the only book that can not be fitted into an old niche is MacDougal's Nature and 
Work of Plants — the most original, and, perhaps, it is not unjust to say, the only 
original laboratory manual that has appeared in many years. From this and i k >ssibly 
from another book, which is not a botany — Hodge's Nature Study and Life — we may 
glean suggestions; but Ave look in vain to any book now before the public for any- 
thing more definite than suggestions as to a fit course in botany for the agricultural 
college. Nothing is more certain than that if botany is to take its proper place in 
the agricultural course, Ave must develop, de novo, a botanical method suited to our 
special needs. And it is probable that when this botany is developed it will also 
prove better adapted to secondary school use than any existing course. As to what 
must be the content and method of this new botany, each teacher must determine 
by his own experience. I venture to make the following general suggestions: 
(1 ) The course should be presented absolutely from the standpoint of agriculture 
and as an integral part of the agricultural course. The bearing of each fact and 
theory upon agricultural processes should be emphasized. The aim of the course 
should be to present the facts of plant life which underlie plant production; in other 
words, to explain the immediate phenomena of agriculture, in so far as those 
phenomena can be explained, by reference to the plant; and in so far as such 
problems have been explained at all by investigation to date. 
(2) The cultivated plants should be the primary objects of study: if the native 
flora is introduced at all it should be only those plants that are of economic interest. 
This Avould mean that the student would acquire a minute familiar knowledge of 
the common crop plants. The cryptogams should be studied from the broad stand- 
point of what they do, before their morphology is considered. For example, an 
exhaustive study can be made of the phenomena of fermentation, without raising 
the question as to the form of an individual yeast plant or bacterium. In general, 
the naked-eye characters, morphological and physiological, should be studied before 
the microscopical. 
(3) Throughout the course experiments should not be presented as facts to be 
verified, but definite questions should be asked (and not leading questions), which 
the student should answer from the results of the experiment. Nor should descrip- 
tive definitions be given in words, but deduced from observation and expressed in 
