Abstract
THE object of this little book is to provide students of school age with practical exercises in the study of plant life. It is, as it were, a twentieth-century edition of the book of “Common Things” which bored the children of earlier generations. Unlike those forbidding compendiums, it seeks to lead children to a study of Nature through the avenue of experiment, and hence possesses a marked superiority over its early prototypes. Nevertheless, it has the fundamental defect of all those books which seek to evade the disciplinary grind which is the only passport into the world of science. Thus the student is supposed to learn how plants grow by marking corn roots with thread or waterproof ink, and he is advised to draw an entirely erroneous conclusion, namely, that sunlight is necessary for plant growth from an experiment in growing plants in the dark. Having performed the experiment, he is told about carbohydrates and is told about photosynthesis, on which things and phenomena the experiment throws but little and faint light.
Field and Laboratory Studies of Crops: An Elementary Manual for Students of Agriculture.
By Prof. A. G. McCall. Pp. viii + 133. (New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.; London: Chapman and Hall, Ltd., 1916.) Price 3s. 6d. net.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
K., F. Field and Laboratory Studies of Crops: An Elementary Manual for Students of Agriculture . Nature 99, 383 (1917). https://doi.org/10.1038/099383a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/099383a0