514 AMERICAN FORESTRY 



forms. In this subject nature freely unfolds many of her charms. The forest 

 is filled with interesting and wonderful things at every season of the year. It 

 may be visited in winter as well as summer, and when in winter garb it reveals 

 many secrets that are hidden during the other months. Even for class-room 

 and laboratory work, the forest furnishes a wealth of material. It may be 

 dissected and brought piecemeal to the very desks of the pupils and to decorate 

 the walls of the class room. Studies capable of illustration with such easily 

 obtainable and such tangible material have a great advantage over other 

 studies, in that the child mind can reach the abstract only through things 

 which appeal directly to his senses. 



As an adaption of the school garden, which has of late become very 

 popular and justly so, comes the school forest nursery, where trees can be 

 grown from seeds of cuttings, and the seedlings used for school plantations, 

 for roadside planting, for the beautification of home yards, and the like. Not 

 only would those nurseries give many practical lessons in tree growing and 

 planting and inculcate a lasting love of trees and an appreciation of their 

 benefits, lessons which could probably not be impressed so permanently in any 

 other way, but they would possess the advantage over the school garden that 

 they couid sustain the child's interest in the same individual plants during 

 his whole course, since there would not be the yearly maturing of the crop 

 as is the case in the garden.* 



What is perhaps the most forceful argument has been left to the last. It 

 is the vigorous indorsement which has been given by teachers themselves to 

 the introduction of this study. Recently the Forest Service of the United 

 States Department of Agriculture made a census of state, county, and city 

 superintendencies and normal schools in which the subject of the forest was 

 taught in any form. Seven hundred and fifty-one superintendents reported that 

 the subject was taught in at least some of the schools under their supervision, 

 while four hundred and sixty-one indicated their willingness to consider its 

 introduction. Of the normal schools, out of two hundred and twenty-one 

 which replied, one hundred and thirty-nine reported that forestry or tree 

 study was one of the branches taught and forty-seven indicated a desire to 

 introduce it. The forest study pursued in those schools ranged in all degi-ees 

 from the simplest forms of the study included incidentally in nature study 

 or botany to well developed courses of the science. In some superintendencies 

 the subject was taught in all the schools, in others only a few schools in 

 each had introduced it. The reports from the normal schools were the most 

 gratifying, not only in the relative number of schools which were teaching the 

 subject, but in the excellence and completeness of many of the courses. The 

 greatest obstacles to the widespread introduction of forestry in the schools 

 has been the lack of the requisite knowledge on the part of the teachers. It is 

 particularly auspicious, therefore, that the subject is being so well established 

 in the normal schools. The .summer training schools for teachers at some 

 of the universities, notably The Summer School of the South, at the University 

 of Tennessee, have also taken up the work. The tendency is significant. Up to 

 a few years ago, the study of the forest was sacrcely known outside of a few 

 technical schools and even simple tree study occupied but a very minor 

 place. It is now receiving the consideration of the educators of the entire 

 country and is gaining for itself a position in the school commensurate with its 

 importance to the nation. 



♦Complete directions for establishing and maintaining a school nursery are given 

 in Farmers' Bulletin 423, "Forest Nurseries for Schools," which may be had free from the 

 U. S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C. 



