26 i 
Botany at Chicago University . 
expressed by the moral little mottoes seen tucked into the name¬ 
plate of a research room door, or framed on an office wall, “ Keep 
Smiling,” and “ Don’t Worry.” 
As may be imagined, the laboratories are splendidly’equipped 
with every modern appliance, and the usual large scale of American 
work finds expression here in the hundred or more objects embedded 
at a time for the microtomes (of course running by electricity!), 
which cut ribbons often more than an inch wide, and daily afford a 
“ potential output ” of slides that only Professor Bower could 
estimate. The fossil slides bearing the familiar names of “ Lomax ” 
and “ Dulesgate ” are old friends to the English visitor, but they 
will soon have companions of American manufacture, for in the 
basement of the budding is a fine machine for cutting rock sections 
and a mass of “Cycadella” material only awaiting the enthusiast 
with the necessary time and strength. 
A most agreeable feature in the life of the Department is the 
weekly club meeting, open to all botanists, and preceded by tea, 
served with lemon instead of milk, and iced when the shade- 
temperature is above 90° F. Papers on original work done in the 
Department are read and briefly discussed, or critical accounts of 
recently published works are given by members of the Staff. During 
the fourth or summer quarter—peculiar to the University of Chicago, 
and throughout distinguished by special features—most interesting 
resumes are given, by specialists in the various subjects, on the 
present position and problems of morphology, physiology, ecology, 
laboratory technique, and the teaching of botany. 
The elementary work of the Department is, perhaps, its least 
satisfactory side. Beginners have few, if any lectures. They read 
up a subject in a text-book, and, for practical work, study stained 
microtome preparations made for them by the demonstrators. 
They seem to examine very little material for themselves, and are 
quite incapable of cutting freehand sections, indeed I doubt if many 
of them realise such a possibility! I once astonished an advanced 
student with a preparation made in two minutes by the aid of a 
sharp razor and a simple water stain, from material fresh from the 
field, and one cannot help feeling that almost sole reliance on 
elaborate technique is a mistake, particularly in the training of 
embryo teachers, a numerous class of students, who later on, in 
their schools, are not likely to possess, and in any case would not 
have time to use, the multifarious apparatus so lavishly provided for 
them by their Alma Mater. 
Botany, too, shares the disadvantage of all other undergraduate 
courses, which results from the large number of subjects required 
for the bachelor’s degree, and the consequent impossibility of 
obtaining a thorough knowledge of any single one. This was 
curiously illustrated by a student, who had taken an advanced 
course of laboratory technique, but did not seem to possess rudi¬ 
mentary notions of floral morphology, though she was just about to 
graduate. Anxious British undergraduates, wondering if they will 
“ get through,” may envy the ease with which the Chicago student 
automatically takes his degree after three or four years of satis¬ 
factory work, untroubled by either “Intermediate” or “Final” 
examinations, but they may be consoled with the reflection that the 
bachelors are thought little more of than what indeed they are— 
