This very hurried survey of what the new botany offers is too fragmentary and brief to be called even an outline, and certainly does not do justice to the course as it may be carried out. But it may suggest, perhaps, the line along which the work proceeds. It hardly seems necessary to add that the very essence of ecology is the field work. No matter how commonplace the lesson to be taught or the object to be studied, it means far more to the student to see a plant growing in its natural

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... ings than to see it only in the scliool room. I now come to the last head under which I propose to speak of my subject, the stand of authorities on this question. In this time of individual religious freedom and rejection of any external, final authority, I would not seem to place botany on a less rational basis relying too much on the men who write our text books and conference reports. But as the majority of us who are teachers give instruction during the year in from five to fifteen subjects, and so are not able to deal exclusively with those subjects in which we are especially interested, it would seem fitting that we should