Repository: UIHistories Project: Course Catalog - 1888-1889 [PAGE 78]

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SCHOOL OF NATURAL HISTOSlr.

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but does not lead to a degree. Graduates in literary courses who wish also the advantages of a scientific course, may pursue elective work or may usually take in two years the degree of Bachelor of Science by carrying the scientific studies of the course alone.

SPECIAL STUDIES.

Botany.—Candidates for admission are examined upon Gray's Lessons in Botany, or an equivalent, and are expected to be able to analyze readily common wild flowers. Beginning with the fall term of the sophomore year, systematic and structural botany is continued by recitations, illustrated lectures, and laboratory work upon fresh, dried, and alcoholic specimens. Students, throughout the course, are required to observe for themselves, and to make notes and drawings of their investigations. A series of these drawings, upon a uniform scale, together with the accompanying descriptions, is deposited in the laboratory. Each student provides himself with suitable pencils, drawing pens, paper, needles in .handles, glass slides for mounting objects, and razor for making thin sections. The first half of the fall term is devoted to the study of the natural orders of flowering plants, their geographical distribution, importance, etc., together with a history of a few special plants and their products. Daring this time, students analyze in the laboratory flowering plants of the more difficult orders, Compositse, Gramineas, etc., especially such as are best obtained in autumn. During the last half of the term the general morphology of plants, including vegetable anatomy and histology, is studied, practical laboratory work with the microscope being the basis of the instruction. Tests are made from time to time by the use of disguised vegetable substances. The special morphology of the great divisions of the vegetable kingdom, their chief characteristics, their classifications, and the identification of species of flowerless plants, constitute the work of the second term. Special attention is given to injurious fungi, from specimens in the herbarium or grown in the laboratory. Aquaria furnish numerous kinds of fresh water algae, and the green-houses supply specimens in nearly all the groups studied.