chables] AGRICULTURAL NATURE-STUDY 91 



etry, struggle for existence, etc. An important point in the 

 planting is to eliminate the personal equation, and the children 

 readily understood that if the experiment was to be worth any- 

 thing, there must be no difference between the two plots — the 

 fertilized plot and the "check" — save the one difference of fer- 

 tilizer applied. It was arranged that child A should plant row 

 No. I (variety Xo. I) in both the fertilized and unfertilized 

 plots; B should plant row Xo. 2 in each plot; C, row Xo. 3; 

 and so on. So far as possible, the planting was uniform 

 throughout, but by this scheme we endeavored to secure the 

 most uniform planting possible in the two rows under imme- 

 diate comparison. A second set of children covered the seeds, 

 child M covering row Xo. 1 in each plot ; N covering row Xo. 2 

 in each bed; and so on. The best writer in the class was se- 

 lected to label the rows. 



(6) The science of agriculture is claimed by many to be un- 

 suited to the purposes of elementary education, but it is perhaps 

 true that the fundamentals of scientific agriculture are, in their 

 lowest terms, available for nature-study uses in the hands of 

 one who understands both agriculture and children. The children 

 who were conducting this experiment in soil fertility thor- 

 oughly understood at the end of the experiment, if not at the 

 beginning, that a plant hungers and must be fed, as truly as an 

 animal. This is more than the average tiller of American soil 

 as yet apprehends, as is evidenced by the average yield of corn 

 in the United States. Immediately before planting, nitrate of 

 soda was sprinkled lightly over the soil in one bed until the 

 "salting" was easily apparent to the eye — giving a grayish cast, 

 but still sparsely strewn. It was then lightly raked over until 

 it was incorporated in the upper half inch of soil. The radishes 

 (and in the parallel experiment, the lettuce) were then planted 

 in the two beds. After ten days, when the seed leaves were 

 well above the surface and the plants were growing rapidly, 

 a second application of the nitrate was made on the fertilized 

 bed, this time sprinkling the fertilizer lightly on either side of 

 each row, at a distance of two inches from the plants; then work- 

 ing it into the soil, using for this purpose a lead pencil. Sim- 

 ilar lead pencil cultivation was given to the rows in the 

 checked plot. Between applications, both plots were cultivat- 

 ed alike, watered alike, as occasion demanded, and the plants 

 thinned alike (one child taking the same row in the two beds). 



