310 THE NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [ 2 : 9 -dec, .906 



leaves, and look like miniature dead trees, but in the spring the buds 

 begin to swell, the bud-scales to open, and the leaves to unfold. It 

 is most fascinating to watch the unfolding of the buds, and the girls 

 are able to note and draw from nature the successive stages of bud 

 development, even when they are prevented by the weather from 

 going out into the garden. The girls are allowed to grow in solution 

 any plants they like, and in summer there are more than one hundred 

 such plants. Beans sixteen feet high have been grown, and some 

 plants have produced flowers and seeds. The seeds are carefully 

 kept, and sown the next year in sawdust; and if the plant of the second 

 generation in solution produces seeds, these are also treasured until 

 the next year, and so on. There are some plants at present in solu- 

 tion whose pedigree has been kept, and whose ancestors for six 

 generations have been grown in food solution. 



Experiments are made by the girls to find out what elements are 

 necessary, and solutions are made up without iron, or without potas- 

 sium, etc., and the effect on the plant noticed. It has been said that 

 the results of growing plants in solution are often unsatisfactory, but 

 this has not been the case at Dulwich. The plants live when they 

 ought to live, and die when they ought to die. In the course of a 

 series of experiments extending over six years, not one case was noted 

 of a plant in normal food solution dying unless it had received some 

 injury to its root or stem. 



Details have now been given of the work carried on by the girls in 

 the garden and laboratory, and a few words must suffice to describe 

 the excursions. These take place throughout the year, and before 

 the girls start on an expedition some definite piece of work is given. 

 Sometimes they study plants on a heath or plants in a cornfield; 

 sometimes they study trees. Many people find it difficult to iden:ify 

 the common English trees in summer, and much more difficult in 

 winter; so the girls study trees in spring, summer, and winter, and 

 learn to identify them by the bark, buds, nature of branching, etc. 



By means of the work carried on indoors and out of doors, the girls 

 are led to observe, to experiment, and to draw conclusions, and in 

 this way the study of Nature, in addition to the pleasure it brings, 

 affords a mental training to all who take part in it. 



As Ruskin says: "To watch the corn grow or the blossoms set; to 

 draw hard breath over ploughshare or spade; to read, to think, to 

 love, to pray — these are the things that make men happy." 



