An Effort to Help the Farmer. 259 



lets N0S.5 and 9. You can watch them every day. You will find that the hairy 

 fellows which live in a tent have great appetites, but you must study their 

 habits and learn how to feed them. You can watch them enlarge their 

 tents as they require more room, and cast off an old suit of clothes when 

 it becomes too small. You will also find it interesting to watch the poUy- 

 wogs develop their feet and lose their tails, and become hop-toads. 

 Ask 3'our teacher to allow you to make all the interesting things that you 

 see the topic for your language lesson, and also for your drawing,if drawing 

 is taught. You can send 3'our papers to us and we will send you similar 

 papers from other Clubs, and will consider you all members. If our talk 

 in Leaflet No. 4 has inspired \'Ou to plant some seeds, you can tell us of 

 your progress in that direction, also. This is not all that we intend to make 

 of our Clubs, but this will be an easy way to make a beginning and to 

 become acquainted. We desire to develop your ideas and power of obser- 

 vation more than your spelling and punctuation. When you have learned 

 to think and to see what you look at, you will be better able to correct your 

 English. Please do not feel afraid of us, but write us as you would to an 

 old friend of whom you are very fond. 



The problem of providing suitable literature for teachers is 

 small as compared with getting them to take up the work. The 

 horse is easih^ led to w^ater, but it is not always easy to make 

 him drink. The introduction of the Junior Naturalists'Club, which 

 consists largely in exchange of written observations and draw- 

 ings, has proved one of the best methods of inducing the teacher 

 and children to make a start. The first step is the hardest. 

 Some rural schools took this first step by gathering apple twigs 

 and sending them to the children of much less favored schools. 

 When the twigs w^ere being packed, the}- were looked upon as 

 brush ; but when a capable teacher had brought out the points 

 as contained in Leaflet No. 3, entitled " Four Apple Twigs," 

 and the pupils had written compositions and had made drawings 

 of what they had discovered and these had been sent to the 

 donors, it was senseless brush no longer. It had a history of 

 half a dozen years written upon it ; and it was the old, old 

 story, — a struggle for existence and the survival of the strongest. 



More than 16,000 school children in this State have sent us 

 their names in request for information on making gardens ; and 

 we have supplied them. 



We should like to make it possible for ever}' rural school to 

 have a collection of insects ; and for every schoolroom to be em- 

 bellished with artistic pictures of farm scenes and farm homes. 



Personal work at the Teachers' Institutes. — The greatest 



