IOO STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



issued each month during the school year. It is intended to 

 deal with the common things that happen to be appropriate at 

 that time — crickets during the cricket season, birds during the 

 bird season, and types of flowers during their season; and to 

 bring out the little things that are ordinarily overlooked. For 

 instance, possibly some of the older people do not know that the 

 crickets are not vocalists, although they thought they had heard 

 their voices, but are fiddlers, that they make music by scraping 

 their legs together. Such little things are brought before the 

 children and attract their attention and they go on and study 

 them and make many interesting observations. 



Illustrations: Junior Naturalist Clubs and Insect Studies. 



The children are banded into groups. Each group is called 

 a club. They can organize a club when they have done certain 

 things. I will show you what we demand of them later. In 

 the meantime we will look at some of the subjects which are 

 used to illustrate these publications. The insects are perhaps 

 the most interesting of all because they furnish in their changing 

 forms great variety. Uncle John writes a letter addressing each 

 child personally, and it is that personal element which holds 

 them together. Here is one of the big horned larva which forms 

 an exceedingly interesting subject. The caterpillars themselves 

 are very interesting subjects; the pupils are most interested in 

 seeing them crack open their skin and crawl out. Here is the 

 larva of the common tomato worm, and he is a pretty business- 

 like chap when he is at work ; he uses up the leaf of the tomato 

 in short order. Let us pass through rapidly the various stages 

 which occur in the life history of this one as he passes from the 

 larva to the adult stage, and just here is a most interesting thing. 

 We had a very suggestive paper this afternoon on Insecticides, 

 Their Uses and Dangers. The writer did not tell us just what 

 perhaps he had in his mind altogether, but the suggestion comes 

 to me here now, that we can teach our children many useful 

 things about the way in which nature holds the various forms of 

 animal life in check. Here is this same larva of the tomato 

 worm badly infested with a parasite, and it is interesting to 

 know that the eggs of this parasite are laid in the body of the 

 tomato worm, and that these are the cocoons of the larvae which 

 after eating through pass into the next stage on the outside of 

 the bodv. That worm is of course doomed and will never be 



