“Narrow Specialisation 
* 5 ® 
pass degree in the University of London are often disappointed on 
reaching their second (post-intermediate) year to find how almost 
entirely morphological their work is likely to he. Subjects such as 
Ecology or Variation and Heredity which always possess a great 
fascination for those beginning of the study of biology are hardly 
dealt with at all. 
Under the present system of examinations a parrot-like 
learning of strings of morphological facts is necessary—the more 
time that is devoted to this task, the better the examination 
results. This allows little time for general reading, and the mind 
is stultified instead of being widened. (By “ general reading ” I do 
not mean only that directly in connection with the subject.) There 
seems to me to be much too great a tendency to narrow specialisa¬ 
tion during the undergraduate years, and this is surely the result 
of the examination system. 
What Professor McLean states about students preferring 
morphological and systematic Botany to physiological is certainly 
not the case among the majority of students that I know—they 
usually have a decided leaning towards physiology, a field where 
there is still much to be discovered, and which exercises the 
reasoning powers in a way which gives the same sort of pleasure 
to the mind as geometrical problems. Physiology is not, or should 
not be, an abstract subject, even though the exact physics of it are 
in many cases not yet worked out. 
Serious students of science should beware of the “ sensuous 
impressions,” “mysterious speculations” and “semi-religious 
fascinations” mentioned by Professor McLean. They are not 
science, they are not conducive to open-minded scientific enquiry, 
and they certainly should be eliminated from a course of elementary 
botany. 
Yours, etc., 
June, 1918. 
A STUDENT. 
