Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 41.djvu/534

518 During the second hour attention was called to the analytical key as an aid in classifying plants, and the class as a whole was instructed by carrying three plants successively through the key to the species. At the same time blanks were filled which made a record of each student's results of inspection. Pupils were now ready to take the simpler plants and classify them at home, which was done to a large extent by some members of the class.

The fifth lecture was a treatment of the general subject of fruits. The subject was illustrated by means of a large list of fruits, freshly gathered from the field, supplemented with several sorts procured at the store. Various seed-vessels may be found in the spring that illustrate fully the methods of opening of the dry fruits for the scattering of seeds, and these were drawn upon at this seemingly unseasonable time for the study of fruits with excellent results. The methods of pressing and mounting plants were practically illustrated at the close of the hour, and a portion of a herbarium placed within reach for inspection.

During the class-hour fresh specimens were supplied, and each pupil worked independently in large part in determining the species. Particular attention was paid to fruits, and the twisting of the cranesbill awns, for example, was seen by all. The sensitiveness of the stamens of the barberry was likewise observed by the class during the hour.

For home work, besides the twenty pages in the text given for each lesson, ten questions were asked in the syllabus, the answers to which were handed in at the next meeting, along with the reports upon "Topics for Study," likewise given in the syllabus. Thus, under Fruits, two of the questions were "(4) In what particular does a strawberry differ from a rose fruit? (6) Of what advantage to a plant that its fruit is a highly colored berry?" Under "Topics for Study" one requirement was to "make drawings of a cross-section of an orange and an apple."

The sixth and last lecture of the course considered the flowerless plants, or those forms of vegetation which are propagated through spores and not by means of seeds.

While upon the ferns, several species in quantity were in the hands of the members of the class, and the method for classifying them gone through with while the descriptive terms necessary for this were being considered. Plates covered with fresh mosses, some sterile and others in fruit, were passed around, while the manner of spore-formation was illustrated by a large papier-maché model of the moss capsule, that was dissected before the class. Various groups of fungi were considered, some of the larger forms shown, as the toad-stools, shelf fungi, and the like, and several rusts were also exhibited. The lecture and the course closed with a consideration of the various groups of sea-weeds,