Abstract
Section D—Biology Initiation of a Discussion upon the Value of the “Type-system” in the Te-iching of Botany, by Prof. Bayley Balfour.— The speaker remarked that within the last fifteen years there had been a complete revolution in the method of teaching botany and zoology. The old method was practical teaching based on classification. In fact, in the olden times it was taught by means of object-lessons, which were sporadically chosen. In that method the real significance of plant life was completely overlooked, and also the position of the plants in Nature and their relationship to the animal kingdom. The result was that they had naturalists bred who had a wide range of knowledge of plant forms, ani able to recognise and name a great number of plants, but of the life-history and sequence of events they were in the dark. The knowledge was a wide but superficial one. The new system was the natural outcome of the progress of the science, and as more knowledge of the minuter forms were obtained, it became necessary to select individual forms to be made types for special study. Thus by degrees a system of teaching was introduced which consisted in the selection of a few characteristic forms, and those were thoroughly studied in their structural and physiological relationship. Thus accurate knowledge of a few types was obtained, and the work now, instead of being in the field, was transferred to the laboratory. That new method was greatly used at the present time, and promised to be more widely introduced by the publication of new text-books running along the lines of that teaching. The old system he did not think produced good results, but he thought that teaching from types, combined with a certain amount of old teaching, would be effective.
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The British Association . Nature 34, 536–539 (1886). https://doi.org/10.1038/034536a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/034536a0