A Botanical Curriculum 
170 
Ration of elementary teaching to younger and less experienced men, 
a change now being advocated in certain quarters, is fraught with 
grave dangers. Younger men are far more likely to despise 
elementary teaching than older ones, and they cannot in any case 
have acquired that matured and balanced view of the subject which 
is absolutely essential to really good general teaching. It is fatal 
also for the chief Professor to get out of touch with his elementary 
students, the raw material out of which future botanists must be 
made. It should be his care to know them as far as possible 
individually, to encourage and stimulate their interest and enthu¬ 
siasm, to make them feel that they belong to a department with single 
aims and a single chief. Except in the case of enormous classes 
these are not at all impossible tasks if the Professor once faces 
them and knows how to use his demonstrators as aides. Of course 
it is not meant that the Professor should spend his time in demon¬ 
strating the structure of Spirogyra in the laboratory. That can 
safely be left to his demonstrators. But he should be about the 
laboratory for a certain time during each elementary practical 
class, looking through a microscope here, talking to a student there, 
and generally making his presence felt. The objection may be 
made that all this involves great waste of the Professor’s valuable 
time. The answer is that it is work which must be done if the 
department is to be a success, and it is work that can best be done 
by a man of matured experience who has the prestige attaching to 
the headship of a department. In a word it is work which the 
Professor should regard as one of his chief concerns. The Professor 
who remarked that it was “ not his business to make chemists but 
to make chemistry” had, as head of a teaching department, mis¬ 
taken his vocation. 
It is essential that the Professor should have the qualities of 
sympathy and imagination, that he may undertand his students 
and their difficulties, and of enthusiasm, that he may gain a real 
influence with them. He should devote at least half of his time and 
energy to the general elementary course. We may assume that 
this should occupy a full working year, the class meeting three 
days a week for three or four hours, and should aim at covering 
the general principles, outlines and methods of modern botany. 
Whether it should follow traditional lines, or should be modelled 
upon the lines which Prof. Miall has adopted with such striking 
success in his elementary class at the Yorkshire College, Leeds, is 
a question we cannot enter upon here. But in any case, too much 
