96 
Some Criticisms and Suggestions. 
very well complete itself, for the science of plants is certainly not 
doing its duty to the country. 
The great practical difficulty in carrying out reforms such as 
you advocate seems to me to be the absence of the men to carry 
them out. The few bright young men who are interested in what 
matters and who have survived the morphological mill, naturally 
have no chance of settling what shall be taught, and from the people 
in established positions, apart perhaps from your co-signatories, it 
does not look as though you would get much help. Still if you can 
get the things that matter constantly held up before the teachers 
you may get a gradual change in the right direction. How would 
it be to ask those (and I imagine there are some) who are trying to 
teach on more fundamental lines to publish their syllabuses ? Would 
it be possible to get out an elementary text book of the right sort? 
Is there anyone who could and would write it, or would co-operation 
be possible ? 
These few halting suggestions are, I am afraid, all I have to 
offer by way of constructive proposals. In conclusion I would say: 
Do not be discouraged by apathy and the non possumus attitude 
which you are certain to meet. Your theoretical position is so 
eminently sound that in the long run it must commend itself, 
except to those whose minds have become ossified. I follow the 
example of “Witness” and sign myself 
Yours pseudonymously but faithfully. 
AJAX. 
SOME CRITICISMS AND SUGGESTIONS. 
To the Editor of the New Phytologist. 
Sir, 
Most Botanists will probably be in agreement with the 
fundamental criticisms of present-day botanical teaching that the 
treatment is too largely morphological and phylogenetic, and 
takes too little cognisance of physiology. But when one turns 
to the translation of general principles of improvement into 
practice several obvious dangers present themselves. The time 
is not so very remote when botanical teaching was as much 
dominated by the taxonomic point of view as it now is by the 
morophlogical. Taxonomy however at the present day only forms 
a very small part of the botanical curriculum, but, nevertheless, 
far from this being accompanied by a better and more fundamental 
treatment, there is probably no part of the subject which is more 
inadequately taught. The restricted time available for systematic 
Botany is usually devoted to the study of certain groups that are 
