254 Botany as the Science of the Living Plant. 
elementary courses provide for them, one realises how far we are 
from thinking of Botany as the Science of the Living Plant. 
But it is not so much a change in the content of elementary 
courses that seems to be desirable, as a modification of the mode 
of presentation of the material, so that instead of giving the 
impression of the all-importance of the construction of evolu¬ 
tionary trees or the expression of the activities of particular organs 
in terms of biochemistry, we should teach it as a science of living 
organisms, in which the central theme should be the mode of living 
of the plant, how it undergoes development both in its ontogeny and 
phytogeny, how it maintains its life processes and how these are 
intimately related with the structure of the organism and the 
environment, how plants vary in their form and mode of living and 
how they solve the problems of existence in different ways, their 
relations one to another, and so on. 
This is not in any sense a syllabus of a course; it is simply a 
crude statement of the fundamental fact that botany differs from 
chemistry or geology chiefly in the fact that it is the study of 
living matter and not of non-living material. 
Without going further into detail I may refer at once to two 
elementary text-books of botany which appear to me to present the 
subject of Botany from the desired point of view. One is 
Timiriazeff’s “ Life of the Plant,” the other is Gager’s" Fundamentals 
of Botany.” The former will undoubtedly be considered too 
physiological by most botanists for a model of an elementary course 
of botany, but the same criticism cannot be levelled against Gager’s 
book. This work in my opinion indicates as nearly as possible the 
scope of an elementary course of botany from the standpoint of the 
Living Plant, such as would be desirable to give at the present 
time. 1 think any morphologist will readily admit that his special 
interests are not side-tracked, for about three quarters of the book 
deals with the structures and life histories of various forms 
throughout the plant kingdom, and the selection of types is 
perfectly orthodox. But the general presentation of the subject 
matter is such that one always realises that it is a living organism 
with which one is dealing, and not merely a body of a certain 
form and struture, nor yet simply a complex chemical system 
which undergoes certain reactions. 
A course such as that presented in Gager’s “ Fundamentals of 
Botany ” seems to me then a suitable introduction to Botany as the 
Science of the Living Plant. A nearer definition of a course 
