The Teaching of Botany.

The first of a series of lectures by Prof. Goodale on "How to Teach Botany" was given yesterday afternoon in the Botany Lecture Room before an audience composed largely of ladies. The lecture was very instructive and interesting and should have been attended by more of the students whether they intended to teach Botany or not. Before he began his lecture proper Prof. Goodale spoke with a great deal of feeling of the life and work of his friend Dr. Watson who died recently. The lecture dealt with the teaching of elementary Botany and was based mainly on the following ideas. The aims of teaching this subject are these, 1st the training of the faculty of observation; 2nd, the cultivation of the judgement; 3rd, the arousing of interest in natural objects and phenomena; 4th, the imparting of some familiarity with common plants.

The materials at hand for the attainment of these ends in nearly all practical cases are florists flowers, wild flowers in the country, seeds and seedlings, dried specimens, bulbs, tubers, cuttings, buds and wood sections. All of these things may be had at little or no cost and all of them are essential to a good course in the subject. Of the appliances necessary nearly all are easily procurable. A hand lens, some needles, a knife and some drying paper are about all the apparatus needed. The pupil should be made to draw on paper as much of what he sees as possible.

Prof. Goodale advocated the teaching of botany to children and defined clearly the parts of the subject which he thought within their grasp. They may study the outward form and more or less of the inward, cell structure of plants; the underlying idea, the vegetal morphology, may also be discovered by them. The child, however, cannot be expected to understand the classification of plants into families, their knowledge must be general, not specific.