We studied from which information channels individuals reported learning the most information about preventive health care, how those channels correlated with one another, and how well they were predicted by demographics and health orientations. A probability sample of 1,963 adults from 8 midwestern communities were interviewed from late 1994 to early 1995. Respondents reported learning different amounts of preventive health information from different channels, and a mix in levels of learning was found across channels. Television news and information rated unexpectedly high across the population studied. An exploratory factor analysis indicated a clear grouping or repertoire consisting of television channels, and for magazines and newspapers, but also a distinct personal media repertoire involving a mix of health professionals, family and friends, books, educational materials, and computers. Demographics did better at predicting learning from traditional print media, but personal health orientations were more effective predictors of personal media; television was less well predicted by either.

Salient findings indicate illiteracy and traditional attitudes m not impenetrable barriers; receiver personal characteristics may be less important than situational factors in diffusion of technical information.. Marion R. Brown is associate professor in the Department of Agricultural Journalism and the Land Tenure Center, University of Wisconsin, Madison. This report is based on research conducted in Chile last year for the Center. He returned to Chile in September. The views and interpretations expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the supporting or cooperating organizations. 725

With the dawn of the nineteenth century biology was introduced into the secondary school curricula of the United States. Previous to this time it had held a minor place in European schools, but received no recognition on this side of the Atlantic. Its introduction into America is to be attributed to the broadening conception of the meaning and function of education which prevailed in the country after the Revolution and which expressed itself institutionally in the founding of academies, more liberal in both aim and subject matter than the earlier grammar schools had been. The introduction of biology cannot be connected directly with the founding of these academies except in so far as both are the result of one cause; for during the first quarter of the century it was confined within the limits of female seminaries and "to classes collected especially for hearing lectures on that subject.^Even in these places botany alone was taught, being regarded as preferable to zoology by reason of its being^more attractive, elegant and precise, so well adapted to the refinement of female education.^The precedence thus gained by botany over zoology it has maintained to the present day.' *Essay presented for the degree of Master of Arts, Columbia University, 1901.

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