BIOL 331 - Medical Mycology: Botany @ the Normal School

Glass plate photograph by W. W. Deatrick, circa. 1899

From the 1886 Catalog of the Keystone State Normal School

"The Institution recognizes the fact that the benefits derived from the study of the Natural Science is not to be found in the memorizing of technical terms, nor in the acquisition of facts; but rather in the development of the perceptive powers and in the increased ability of rightly interpreting the environments of life.  The instruction in Botany is, therefore, concrete and practical.  The subject is taught as one continued object lesson.  The students plant seeds and study their germination and growth.  They gather buds and watch their development into leaves and flowers.  Botanical terms are learned by the aid of the parts of the plant that give rise to their use.  The text-book is used only as a book of reference or dictionary.  The analysis of each plant is recorded on one page prepared for the purpose, while on the opposite page a drawing of the same plant is neatly executed.  The students also press, dry. classify, and preserve the plants thus studied.  In this way they form an herbarium of their own, that is to stimulate them to further investigation.  The fact that students who have graduated and left the institution, still find pleasure and recreation in devoting their leisure hours to Botany, speaks well for the methods employed."