714 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



calling. As boys, they are truants or shirks ; 

 and later on they constitute the class of men 

 never able to retain a situation for any length 

 of time. Others become thieves, to be able 

 to indulge their propensities for dissipation. 

 Within the last few years there has been a 

 marked increase in the number of those com- 

 mitted whose nervous and mental condition 

 is unsatisfactory. 



The Grass Garden of the Department 

 of Agricnltnre. In the grass garden of the 

 United States Department of Agriculture 

 double beds, or plats, are arranged on each 

 side of the greater length for the growth of 

 native plants to be allowed to come into 

 flower. Inside of these bands is a narrow 

 range of plats in which are grown various 

 fodder plants clovers, vetches, lupines, etc. 

 which do not belong to the grass family. 

 Extending lengthwise through the center is 

 a series of larger beds in which are culti- 

 vated those grasses that are known or sup- 

 posed to be good formers of turf. An op- 

 portunity is afforded by such an arrangement 

 for the comparison of one kind of grass or 

 forage plant with another, and for noting 

 their relative merits for special purposes. 

 In it may be grown, too, for the use and in- 

 formation of the botanist, the grasses of all 

 countries, arranged according to their natural 

 tribes and subdivisions. Opportunities for 

 study and experiment may thus be given the 

 botanist and the economist such as can be 

 got in no other way. Native plants should 

 always have a prominent position here, in 

 order that we may become familiar with 

 them, and because they may exhibit under 

 cultivation qualities of usefulness which can 

 not be detected in them in their native sta- 

 tions. Mr. F. Lawson Scribner, Agrostolo- 

 gist of the United States Department of 

 Agriculture, says, in the Yearbook of that 

 department, that " we have better grasses 

 and a greater variety of them native to our 

 soil than we can ever get from Europe, and 

 it will not be necessary to grow them ten or 

 twenty years or more in order that they may 

 be acclimated. . . . There are sixty native 

 species of clovers found in the United States ; 

 there are more than sixty kinds of blue 

 grass distinct botanical species ; there are 

 twenty or more good grazing grasses related 

 to the buffalo grass ; there are fourscore or 



more of native lupines and twoscore vetches 

 which have yet to be tried in our agricul- 

 ture ; and then there are broom grasses, and 

 meadow grasses, and pasture grasses, and 

 hay grasses, almost numberless, suitable to 

 every kind of soil and rock formation and 

 climate. And of all this wealth of kinds, 

 the natural heritage of our country, hardly 

 more than a dozen have been brought into 

 cultivation." 



Oral Schools for the Deaf and Damb. 



The first oral schools for the deaf and dumb 

 were established in 1867, when the sign sys- 

 tem of instruction had been in full sway for 

 fifty years, and they had to dispute for prog- 

 ress with a method which seemed firmly es- 

 tablished. In 1868, 38 out of the 304 deaf 

 pupils in the New England States, or a little 

 more than 12 per cent of the whole number, 

 Avere taught in oral schools. The Horace Mann 

 School was established in Boston the next 

 year, and since then the percentage has 

 steadily increased till, toward the end of 

 1893, 351 out of a total of 524 pupils, or 

 67 per cent, were found exclusively in oral 

 schools. Outside of the New England States, 

 besides the special schools in which it is 

 exclusively used, the oral method has been 

 admitted into many of the other schools, and 

 both systems are taught in them a fact 

 which is expressed by the words " combined 

 system." Statistics of the use of the oral 

 method in the whole United States show 

 very clearly that the oral method is extend- 

 ing with great rapinity. Prof. A. Graham 

 Bell, in the address from which we quote 

 these facts, adduces as an argument for the 

 excellence of the oral system that the little 

 schools in which it is taught, springing up 

 by private enterprise, are able to compete 

 successfully with the State sign schools un- 

 til the latter introduce the oral system and 

 become "combined" schools, while the little 

 schools still live. In Germany the oral 

 method has encroached upon the sign meth- 

 od till that has given way to a combined 

 system. At the International Convention of 

 Teachers of the Deaf, held in Milan in 1880, 

 all the delegates from continental Europe 

 voted for the preference of the pure oral 

 method, while all the votes cast against the 

 resolution were those of an Englishman and 

 three Americans. This decision has been 



