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appointed by the Society for riant Morphology and Phygiology to consider the for- 
mulation of a standard college entrance option in botany. The full-year option rec- 
ommended in that report was formally adopted by the college entrance examination 
hoard (formerly of the Middle States and Maryland) in December, L901. The prin- 
ciples upon which the course was formulated are Stated in the report essentially as 
follows: 
(1) It is founded upon the two important reports of the National Educational Asso- 
ciation— -the Report of the Committee of Ten (Washington, L893), and the 
Report on College Entrance Requirements (Chicago, L899 
(2) It is intended primarily as an option for entrance to college, hut equally for the 
education in the high school of the general student who can follow the sub- 
ject HO farther: there are in botany no advantages in having the college pre- 
paratory and the general educational courses different, at least none that are 
at all commensurate with the additional burden thus laid upon the schools. 
(3) It should, if possible, he founded upon a considerable body of botanical fact 
learned through "nature study" in the lower schools; it should form pari of 
a four-years' high-school course in the sciences; it should he considered and 
treated as an elementary or preliminary course leading to second courses in 
college, and colleges accepting the option should make provision to articulate 
• second courses economically with it. 
(4) The immediate plan of its construction is very simple, namely, to include those 
topics in the leading divisions of the subject which most teachers now regard 
as fundamental, either for their value in scientific training, or as knowledge; 
but the individual teacher is left free to follow his own judgment as to sequence 
of topics, text and other books, and special methods. Advice is occasionally 
offered, however, upon important points in which most teachers are now- 
known to agree. 
(5) It recognizes the existence of, and provides for, two modes of procedure in the 
sequence of topics. In one, that here advised, the general principles of plant 
structure and function, permitting a beginning with large and familiar objects 
and phenomena, are first studied, to be followed later by a study of representa- 
tives of the groups of plants from the lower to the higher; the other makes 
the study of the groups the backbone, as it were, of the course, beginning 
with the lowest forms and introducing the physiological and morphological 
topics at appropriate places in the ascending series. The two modes, however, 
lead to substantially the same result, and a common examination is practicable 
for both. 
(6) It is designed to yield a mental discipline fully equal in quality and quantity to 
that yielded by any other subject studied for the same length of time. 
(7) The time per week, inclusive of recitation, preparation, and laboratory, should 
be the same as for any other subject. Where five periods a week, with an 
hour of preparation for each, are demanded for other studies, this course 
should receive the equivalent of two recitation periods with their preparation, 
together with three double (not six separated) periods in the laboratory and 
a small amount of outside work or preparation. Variation from this should 
be toward a greater, not a lesser, proportion of laboratory work. The prepara- 
tion of records of the laboratory work, in which stress is laid upon diagram- 
matically accurate drawing and precise aud expressive description, is re- 
garded as an integral part of the course. 
The specifications for the full-year option are: 
(I) A half year devoted to the general principles of anatomy, morphology, physiol- 
ogy, and ecology. 
(II) A half year devoted to the natural history of the plant groups, with classifica- 
tion. 
The full-year option may consist of II enlarged to a year and including the essen- 
tials of I. (See principle 5 above. ) 
I. The Half Year in the General Principles of Anatomy, Morphology, Physi- 
ology, and Ecology. 
The fundamental topics are presented in the report as follows: 
A. In Anatomy and Morphology. 
The seed. Four types (dicotyledon without and with endosperm, a monoco- 
tyledon, and a gymnosperm ) ; structure and homologous parts. Food supply; 
experimental determination of its nature and value. Phenomena of germi- 
nation and growth of embryo into a seedling (including bursting from the 
seed, assumption of position, and unfolding of parts). 
