Dartmouth's Intellectual Life
The Department of Botany
THE land surface of the earth is more or less completely covered with vegetation and the life of man and of all the lower animals is wholly dependent upon the continued growth of plants. To extend our knowledge of plant life and to teach men to understand and to utilize the various kinds of plants is the task of those who deal with the science of plant life. Botany is therefore a fundamental science which contributes to the everyday life and problems of mankind.
How different is this conception from that of botany as the collection of names and dried specimens of plants. But it is only within the last three decades that the broader view of botany has come to be recognized in the teaching of the subject. As late as the 1890's, when all Dartmouth students who elected the Chandler Scientific Course were required to take botany under Prof. Jesup, a large part of the work was to make a collection of the local flowering plants, properly mounted and named. On some of those sheets of plants which became a part of the Jesup Herbarium we find the names and handwriting of such men as Stephen Chase, Frederic E. Atwood, Nelson P. Brown, Homer E. Keyes and many others. Today we recognize such work as valuable and important but only as one of several phases of botany. However, the old traditions still cling as traditions always do about a subject which has had a fixed status in the minds of previous generations.
The work now being offered in the Department of Botany is much the same as that given to its students for the last few years except that the first year men are now given a better introduction to all phases of plant life. The form and parts of plants, their life histories, their methods of nutrition, growth and reproduction and their economic relationships to man and animals are some of the points considered. The second semester is devoted entirely to the flowering plants. The result is that those who take only the introductory courses become acquainted with the various kinds and activities of plants and can recognize and appreciate many of them in later years and enjoy natural phenomena the better for it. Field work during the month of May gives the opportunity to make real connections between the names of the classroom and the plants as they grow in their natural environment.
VALUE OF THE NEW GREENHOUSE
Another aspect of the teaching in both the introductory and subsequent courses is the increased emphasis which has been placed on the living plants as the result of the erection of the Clement Greenhouse. This fine piece of educational equipment has made it possible for the students to study typical plants in all stages of their development and to watch the life processes at all seasons of the year. The classes in plant physiology meet in the laboratories contained within the new greenhouse unit. All the courses given in the Department, but especially those hi plant diseases and plant nomenclature, use the rooms or the growing plants in some way.
For the men who are interested in taking more work than is given in the introductory courses, there is opportunity to study any or all of the special fields of botany up to and including the point of majoring in the subject. The courses in these smaller divisions of botany have been laid out for the type of student who enrolls in Dartmouth as opposed to those who attend the universities and particularly the agricultural colleges where the work is given for the professional botanist. There is a real distinction between studying botany in preparation for graduate work or for careers which depend on applied botany, and botany as an interpretation of the phases of plant life which come within the experience of the average citizen as he makes his garden or lawn, cares for his trees and shrubs or encounters the plants of his own or foreign lands. The Department of Botany at Dartmouth attempts to provide primarily for the average student and to teach what any man might well know about plants.
The major program in botany is much like that in the other sciences—a group of courses which include the essential fields of the subject and which are drawn together in the senior year by the coordinating course and the comprehensive examination. Honors work is not offered because the student can study plants to the best advantage in company with his fellows in the comparatively small classes. But in the senior year and at various points throughout the preceding years, every student has the opportunity to investigate points which interest him and into which he cares to penetrate along lines not provided for in the routine of the courses. Experience has shown that these opportunities are really utilized by the men and that both students and teachers profit by these informal investigations. The Baker Library includes a very good botanical library and a number of rare and valuable source books, while the new equipment and facilities upon which the Department of Botany depends makes it possible to study practically any phase of plant life.
CLEMENT GREENHOUSE
IN DEAR OLD 1889
