330 BuLivKTiN 137. 



ent parts of western New York. These comprise experiments in 

 tilling the land, in pruning trees, in fertilizing the soil, spraying, 

 combating insects and fungi, and the like. The fundamental 

 purpose in these experiments is to teach by means of object 

 lessons and not to collect scientific facts, although the latter often 

 come as a very valuable incidental result. 



The bulletins which have been issued under the auspices of the 

 work are public and therefore need no explanation at the present 

 time. 



The horticultural schools have been about forty in number. 

 These are meetings which last two or more days, at which time cer- 

 tain instructors take up definite lines of instruction, giving by far 

 the greater part of their attention to underlying principles and not 

 to mere facts or methods. A somewhat full report of these horti- 

 cultural schools, with the topics and instructors assigned to each, 

 is published in Bulletin 122. 



The fundamental difficulty with our agricultural condition is 

 that there is no attempt to instruct the children in matters which 

 will awaken an interest in country life. We have therefore con- 

 ceived that the place in which to begin to correct the agricultural 

 status is with the children and the rural schools. For the pur- 

 pose of determining j ust how much could be expected from this 

 source, many rural and village schools were visited during the 

 past year, the instructors talking to the children about any object 

 which presented itself at the time. The result was that all the 

 instructors were impressed with the readiness with which the 

 children imbibed the information, their keen desire for it and 

 appreciation of it, and the almost universal interest which 

 teachers took in this kind of work. We are now convinced that 

 the greatest good which can be rendered to the agricultural 

 communities is to awaken an interest in nature-study on the 

 part of teachers and children. In order to facilitate teaching 

 in this direction, we have issued five leaflets to show teach- 

 ers how nature-study may be presented to the pupils, and 

 these have been received with the greatest enthusiasm by edu- 

 cators and others amongst our constituency. The hint for this 

 work in the public schools was derived from the work which 

 was done by George T. Powell, in Westchester County, 



