io So?ne Practical Suggestions. 
With regard to the Pass Course, a reasonable familiarity with 
the British Flora is desirable, and all students should be able to 
use a Flora. Similarly, all candidates for Honours should have 
some knowledge of economic botany; there should be no difficulty 
in introducing the subject in all of the three types of scho ol 
suggested. 
2. STAFF .—It is generally true that most departments are 
understaffed. The head and his subordinate heads (if there happens 
to be any) are responsible not only for teaching but also for organ¬ 
isation and administration, in addition to which much outside work 
has to be done. Their spare time may be devoted to original work. 
Practical classes almost invariably suffer from too few demonstra¬ 
tors. This is particularly true of practical classes in plant physiology 
in which there should be one demonstrator for each eight or ten 
students if proper training in this branch of the subject is to be 
given. Further, there are very few botanists—I can only think of 
one, and he would disclaim it—who are sufficiently conversant with 
the advances in knowledge of chemistry and physics to conduct 
classes in advanced physiology entirely by themselves. The staff of 
each botany department should, therefore, include a chemist and a 
physicist. This is essential if one of the honours school is to be 
biochemistry and biophysics. 
3. TEACHING .—Signs are not wanting that the quality of 
teaching of botany has fallen off in recent years, a fact probably 
due to an overloaded syllabus with the inevitable examination 
looming in the distance. The resulting tendency is that both 
teacher and student try to accomplish too much. Further, there 
is too much lecturing and too little teaching. This deterioration 
in teaching appears to be true not only with respect to theoretical 
but also to laboratory work. The practical training in vegetable 
physiology leaves much to be desired; too much standard apparatus, 
bought ready made, is used, with the result that it is very rare 
indeed to find a student who can, at the end of his course, design 
an apparatus to demonstrate a particular phenomenon with which 
he is generally familiar, but which he did not happen to do in his 
course in the particular form presented. Progress cannot be made 
unless each problem, no matter how simple it may appear, is clearly 
presented to the student’s mind. The reason for each piece of 
apparatus must be clearly understood, and the causes of failure and 
of peculiar and unexpected results must be ascertained. Every 
student should make up his own apparatus as far as is possible. 
