50 Academic Botany and the Farm and Garden. 
THE RECONSTRUCTION OF 
*. 
ELEMENTARY BOTANICAL TEACHING. 
ACADEMIC BOTANY AND THE FARM AND GARDEN. 
In justification of the note of alarm sounded in the article 
initiating this discussion, the most disturbing aspect is that I can 
find no instance of a botanist whose services (as a botanist) were 
considered “ essential ” during the crisis we have just passed 
through; notwithstanding the fact that the objects of his study are 
essential to man’s existence. The following incident is suggestive. 
In the early days of the war, a young man, descended from a long 
line of farmers and gardeners, and himself a very capable son of the 
soil, being unable to “ join up,” entered one of our large Universities 
in the hope of increasing his usefulness. After he had been some 
months in the laboratories 1 enquired about his progress. His reply 
was this : “When I go to the University I feel I am in another 
world, and one which has no connection with either the garden 
or the farm.” That there should be a real and practical connection 
seems obvious, but we appear to have missed it. 
T. W. WOOD HEAD. 
December , 1918. 
ON SOME ASPECTS OF THE PLEA FOR 
RECONSTRUCTION. 
The signatories to the memorandum on the Reconstruction of 
Elementary Botanical Teaching may, I think, congratulate them¬ 
selves on the amount of support they have received. The plea 
that it was inadvisable that comparative morphology should be the 
central or dominating part in an elementary cause has clearly found 
a sympathetic response in the minds of many. It is to be regretted, 
however, that a number of other botanists with a wide experience 
of elementary teaching have taken no part in the discussion. This 
aloofness bears out the complaint, made by the Editor of The New 
Phytologist shortly after the journal was started, that it seems 
almost impossible to persuade English botanists generally to take 
part in a discussion. 
