194 Botany and the Teaching of Biology. 
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The powerful plea for reconstruction along “ live lines” can 
hardly fail to serve a useful purpose, if only the promotion of free 
discussion and the exchange of views. 
It seems significant that those contributors who have most 
severely criticised the views expressed in the memorandum have 
frequently based their criticism on a plea for freedom of action. 
“ Freedom to form a scheme of teaching to meet his (the 
teacher’s) ‘ own needs.’ The right of every botanist to think and 
practice according to his own beliefs without hindrance.” This 
surely is what is sought also by the original signatories! 
After careful study of the memorandum I do not find a denial 
that it is feasible—even under existing conditions—to arrange an 
elementary course of Botany which would deal with the plant as 
a “ living organism.” I do find many arguments that if this is the 
case it is done in spite of and not because of existing regulations. 
Elementary courses are not always in the hands of distinguished 
and experienced botanists, nor is it the good fortune of all students 
to attend such courses or to realise the wider point of view at this 
stage of their work. 
I take it that the purpose of the memorandum was not to 
join issue between the teaching of Morphology and the teaching 
of Physiology as such, but to plead for the teaching of Botany to 
the elementary student so that he may acquire a conception of 
the plant asa living thing, faced, as is he himself, with the problem 
of existence in a not too friendly world : some conception also of 
the extent and constitution of the vegetable kingdom as a whole, 
and, above all, a true appreciation of the immense significance of 
the more fundamental aspects of plant metabolism in relation to 
animal nutrition and the food-supply of the world. 
If the teaching of botany is to serve any purpose other than 
the training of professional botanists; if it is to play its proper 
part in bringing home to the student the close interdependance 
of plant and animal life and the fact that his own life-processes 
are related to those of plants in the most diverse and intimate 
ways, then elementary botany must be taught on other lines than 
those usually prescribed for elementary courses. 
It is not only that the morphological bias of elementary 
syllabuses tends to give the whole subject an aloofness which 
helps to perpetuate the common attitude that Science is some¬ 
thing essentially different and apart from the facts of every day 
