I 22 
A Botanical Curriculum. 
real scientific education lies rather in training the power of observation 
and inference than in the acquirement of facts ; and it is certainly 
the lack of this power in elementary students which so often 
handicaps the demonstrator in his attempts to instil a decent first¬ 
hand knowledge of the facts pertaining to the plants dealt with in 
an ordinary university course. With some happy exceptions the 
elementary student simply does not know how to begin to look at 
a plant, let alone a microscopic section, and a considerable amount 
of time is spent before the rudiments of this knowledge are 
acquired. 
What then are the most suitable things to which to direct the 
attention of a child? Clearly the simplest and most fundamental. 
Reduced to its simplest terms, the germination of seeds is one of 
the easiest of experiments and is immensely instructive, especially 
•> ■ , 
if it can be started with the ripe seeds in the fruit. The transition 
from the apparently dead seed to the young growing plant is striking 
enough, and the causes and incidents of the change can be dwelt 
upon to any desired extent. For quite a young child, it will be 
quite enough to make him see for himself that a seed does not 
germinate unless it is damp and warm, to distinguish the root, 
cotyledons and shoot in different seedlings, and to notice that 
after a time the seedling will not go on growing without a supply of 
food. 
At school, with older boys or girls, the main conditions of 
germination, the distinction between the storing of food in 
endosperm and in cotyledons, the distinction between seeds with 
epigeal and those with hypogeal cotyledons, and the various kinds 
of food required by the seedling after it has exhausted the reserve- 
stores, as shewn by water cultures, would make a full and most 
instructive term’s course; and every bit of the observation and 
experiment can be done by the children themselves. 
With regard to the physiology of the adult plant young children 
cannot be taught much in a systematic way. But where a garden 
is accessible or country walks can be taken, they can be taught to 
look intelligently at quite a number of points which will help to 
build up gradually some idea of the conditions of plant life. Such 
for instance are the relative luxuriance of the same species on 
different soils, the effects of shading, the fixed light-positions of 
leaves and branches, and so on. Many simple physiological observa¬ 
tions and experiments suitable for schools may be found in 
Professor Farmer’s useful little book on Practical Botany. 
