GardenjWork in Congested Cities 



By Joseph S. Taylor, 

 District Superintendent, New York City 



Let it be understood at the outset that I speak not as one 

 "having already attained, either were already perfect." I am 

 somewhat in the position of the clergyman who was reproved 

 by one of his parishioners for some irregularity of conduct.' 'Well 

 brother," replied the pastor, "I believe in division of labor: I preach 

 and you practice." 



The district in New York over which I preside, so far as oppor- 

 tunities for garden work are concerned, is a desert extending 

 from Forty-second Street to the Battery. It includes Wall 

 Street, the richest thoroughfare in the world, and a population 

 consisting largely of poor foreigners coming from all lands and 

 living in wretched tenements. Some of my twenty-six school 

 buildings are modern, but about a dozen of them are of the vintage 

 of 1850 or thereabout, and are hemmed in by tall tenements, 

 factories, or warehouses. We have two or three excellent school 

 gardens, and almost every one of my one thousand teachers 

 has some green thing growing in the classroom window. But we 

 are far from doing all that could be done even in a desert. 



"I have a suspicion," says John Burroughs, "that nature-study 

 as now followed in schools — or shall I say in colleges? — this class- 

 room peeping and prying into the mechanism of life, dissecting, 

 probing, tabulating, void of free observation, and shut away 

 from the open air — would have cured me of my love of nature. 

 For love is the main thing, and to train the eye and ear and acquaint 

 one with the spirit of the great out-of-doors, rather than a lot of 

 facts about nature is, or should be, the object of nature-study." 



I agree with John Burroughs that love of nature is one of the 

 prime benefits of nature-study. If that is not the outcome of 

 the study I should call it a failure. The city-bred boy seems to 

 distrust living creatures on general principles and to regard all 

 alike as his natural enemies and lawful prey. His first query is, 

 "What will he do to you?" His first impulse is to kill. It is the 

 survival of an instinct that once was useful. Our remote ancestors 

 were surrounded by dangerous animals which had to be killed 



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