Repository: UIHistories Project: Course Catalog - 1877-1878 Version B [PAGE 44]

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Illinois Industrial University.

upon a uniform scale, together with the accompanying descriptions, are deposited in the library of the Laboratory. Each student provides himself with suitable pencils, drawing pens and paper, needles in handles, glass slides for mounting objects, and razor for making thin sections. For the first term, a Manual of Botany (Gray's or Wood's) is required. Microscopes and other apparatus are furnished by the University, for which a deposit of three dollars is required, but no charge is made except for damage and material used. The first six weeks are devoted to the study of the natural orders of flowering plants. About twelve lectures are given upon the characteristics of the prominent orders—their geographical distributions, importance, etc., together with the history of a few special plants and their products. During this time, two hours per day, three days per week, students analyze, in the Laboratory, flowering plants of the more difficult orders, Compositae, Graminae, etc., especially such as are best obtained in Autumn. The seventh week is devoted to practical instruction in the use of the compound microscope, and in the preparation of objects. For this, students are furnished with printed directions, and have individual instruction. During the five weeks following, the general morphology of plants, including vegetable anatomy and histology, is studied, there being about ten lectures, and thirty hours of laboratory work. Tests are made from time to time, by the use of disguised vegetable substances. Two Weeks are taken for review, finishing drawings and examination. The special morphology of the great divisions of Cryptogamic and Phaenogamic plants, their chief characteristics, their classifications, and the identification of species of Cryptogams, or 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 kind of fresh water algae, and the green-houses supply specimens in nearly all the groups studied. During the term, there are about twenty lectures, and fifty-four hours of laboratory work, besides review and examination. The most important books of reference in the English language are Sach's "Text-Book of Botany," LeMaout & Decaisne's "Botany," Gray's "Structural Botany," Lindley's "Introduction to Botany," Berkley's "Cryptogamic Botany and Fungology," Cooke's "Fungi," and "Hand-book of British Fungi." Vegetable Physiology is studied the third term of the first year. The botanical part of Johnson's "How Crops Grow" is made the basis of this work, supplemented by lectures and references to other publications, and experimental practice. Respiration,, assimilation, the circulation of fluids, the influence of light and temperature, growth and reproduction, are some of the topics