Reconstruction of Elementary Botanical Teaching. 99 
with those aspects more especially concerning the biologist might he 
available. The suggestion that each department should have a 
physicist and chemist attached is an ideal that will probably at 
present prove not to be within the scope of practical policy. 
We fully agree with Mr. T. G. Hill that the different subjects 
should be taken consecutively and not concurrently, all the more 
as other laboratory subjects (e.g., Chemistry and Physics) form the 
best adjuncts to Botany. We also endorse the view that a Pass 
degree should he a necessary step to graduation in an Honours 
school. As regards the subjects for the former, we should deprecate 
too restricted a choice of combinations, since for some morphological 
minds it is conceivable that, for instance, Botany, Zoology, and 
Geology might yield good results. For this reason too the 
suggested Honours schools, namely Physiology and Ecology, 
Biochemistry and Biophysics, and Morphology are open to objec¬ 
tion, since in the case of an agricultural student, for example, the 
grouping of Ecology and Biochemistry would probably be more 
advantageous than any other. 
We are, Sir, etc., 
F. E. FRITSCH. 
E. J. SALISBURY. 
A SUGGESTION FOR AN HONOURS COURSE. 
To the Editor of the New Phytologist. 
Sir, 
That the university teaching of botany needs vitalising can 
scarcely be doubted; and we owe a great debt to the New 
Phytologist for raising the question in such a practical manner. 
As the matter is being discussed, I venture to put forward an 
alternative proposal. 
It will readily be granted that botany is now too large a subject 
to be covered adequately in a two years’ course. Some form of 
specialisation is clearly necessary; and yet I cannot regard without 
misgiving the division of botanical learning into three schools. We 
cannot look back without envy on our ancestors who were able, not 
so very long ago, to have a fair working knowledge of the whole of 
science, whilst today, most of us have an adequate acquaintance 
with only one department of it. Need we carry the process a 
stage further and condemn our botanical descendants to a 
