Repository: UIHistories Project: Course Catalog - 1890-1891 [PAGE 56]

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54

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS.

The biological work of the senior year is rendered so far elective in character that it may be made to lead towards the study of medicine, natural history teaching, or the pursuit of a special scientific career. Special and elective study is permitted and provided for, 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 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 a 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. During this time, students analyze in the laboratory flowering plants of the more difficult orders, compositae, gramineae, 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. The special morphology of the great divisions of the vegetable kingdom, the;r 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. Aquaria furnish numerous kinds of fresh water algae, and the greenhouses supply specimens in nearly all the groups studied. Vegetable Physiology is studied in the third term. The instruction is given by lectures or text-book, and by experimental practice. The work includes : The food of plants and its absorption and assimilation ; fluids, their kinds, uses, causes of movement, transpiration, respiration, etc.;