Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/385

Rh from the college herbarium, and, when a student had completed his determination, he was expected to make comparisons with the authentic herbarium specimens. At the end of the first half of the term each student submitted his collection, in portfolio, and about ten days after it was again brought for the examination. This was entirely oral, with the specimens before the student. Questions were rapidly asked upon a wide range of subjects and varying for different students. Ordinal characteristics, botanical names, habitats, striking peculiarities, comparison of species of same genus, contrasts of genera of different orders, are some of the groups into which the questions fell. About five pupils could be thus quizzed per hour.

If there should be any lack of specimens, owing to stormy weather, or spare moments from any cause, the economic subjects were resorted to for filling the hour. These subjects form the second feature of the work of the term, and were selected in order of importance, and assigned four to each student, who prepared for recitation upon them. Each set of four subjects was made to embrace as wide a range of vegetable products as possible. The following are two fair samples: Camphor, ebony, orange, and tomato; Brazil-nut, flax, opium, and turnip. These topics were looked up in the college library, using several books the titles of which had previously been placed upon the lecture-room blackboard as "books of reference." The value to students of learning how to use encyclopædias and other reference-books in work of this kind is almost as great as that of the actual information gained upon the subjects in hand. The students took full notes of the recitations upon the topics, and the questions for examination, following this work, were such as to require the grouping and classifying of subjects. A list of general questions was placed upon the blackboard many days before the examination, and from this set a number were finally selected as tests. As samples the following may be given: Treat of the leading commercial gums; the tropical fruits; plants grown for their roots; commercial spices; the leading drugs; Iowa's most important food plants, etc.

Besides these economic subjects each student at the beginning of the term selected a natural order upon which to prepare, for the class, a paper of ten to fifteen minutes in length. The economic topics easily prepared the way for this more thorough work upon some particular group of plants. For example, the student who selected the pulse family (Leguminosæ) had the advantage of all the notes upon the various gums, drugs, dyestuffs, precious woods, food and fodder plants of the order. In like manner, the writer upon the grasses and grains (order Gramineæ) or the palm family (Palmaceæ), could use the information previously