Reconstruction of Elementary Botanical Teaching. 195 
life, it is that it makes it difficult for any but a most experienced 
and able lecturer to introduce the student to the study of plants 
in the light of the more recent as well as the older phases of 
botanical knowledge. 
The plea, as I understand it, is not that plant physiology 
should replace plant morphology as a basis for elementary teaching 
because it is a better thing. It is a plea that the student ot 
Botany may have an opportunity of realising at the outset the 
general scope of our existing knowledge of plants, and that the 
more recent as well as the older aspects of that knowledge may 
find a place in such a presentation. If this is attempted at present 
existing Syllabuses usually handicap the teachers, and the handicap 
is more severe in proportion to his inexperience. 
The practical difficulty of teaching plant physiology experi¬ 
mentally to large elementary classes is a very real one and, in 
my experience, can be only partly met at present by the demonstra¬ 
tion of experiments set up by a member of the teaching staff or by 
selected students. The point of view of the teacher is important 
if such experiments are to carry their full educational value. Some 
acquaintance with the practical cultivation of plants should be 
recognised as an indespensable part of the equipment of the botanist 
—not only of the plant physiologist and researcher but of the 
teaching botanist. It is not infrequent in the botanical laboratory 
to see elementary experiments fail for lack of precautions at which 
a practical gardener would smile 1 
Arising out of these remarks there is an aspect of the subject 
which provides cogent argument for a change in the teaching of 
elementary Botany on the lines suggested in The New Phytologist 
of December last. Of the students who attend elementary courses 
in Botany comparatively few will become professional botanists or 
scientific researchers. Their case seems to me less pressing than 
that of their fellows since opportunities will necessarily recur in 
their subsequent botanical training. Such students will gravitate 
as at present, towards that aspect of the subject which most 
attracts them and this, as at present, will be determined partly 
by the cast of their own minds, and partly, may we say—under the 
fierce light thrown upon this controversy by an earlier contributor 
—(p. 54) by the charm and persuasiveness of their teachers ! 
What of the remainder? Many will become teachers who 
may or may not deal with Botany as a part of their curricula; 
large numbers are medical students who will doubtless tend, as at 
