260 THE PLANT WORI.D 



plan. lyaboratory supports, bell-jars, thistle tubes, etc. , mean more money 

 than most schools can afford for individual work. Every one was forced 

 to ask, " What can I use instead ? " or " What else will do the work ? " 

 Glass cans served as bell-jars, window sashes and distilled-water crates 

 as supports. Just what this substitution alone meant to the pupils one 

 could not guess beforehand ; it is necessary to see a class of city-bred, 

 every-thing-ready-to-use boys and girls take twice the time demanded by 

 farm children for the same kind of work to appreciate it. 



Later it was found that there was another distinct gain in this home- 

 made apparatus ; it was more quickly and clearly understood by the 

 pupils who had not set it up. They looked past it to ask, " Why is it 

 used ? " or " What does it do ? " It was not in itself so attractive or so 

 complicated as to hold the attention or confuse them. 



So far no time outside the regular class hours had been asked of the 

 pupils. No text-book work was assigned for the following Monday and 

 Tuesday, and each group was expected to find time at noon-time or before 

 and after school to have all experiments set up by Tuesday night. The 

 rest of that week and the next week the class reported at roll-call the 

 experiments which were ready. Part of the period was taken by the 

 pupils to state the question given their group, to explain the method and 

 apparatus by which they proposed answering the question and to show 

 the results obtained and interpret them. The rest of the period was used 

 for practical or general questions (such as those given by Andrews in his 

 Botany All the Year Round ") based upon questions already completed. 



Some of the experiments had to be repeated once or twice ; this, 

 however, prevented having everything ready on the same day, besides 

 giving the pupils the extra training. All such work was done outside 

 the regular period. 



Each pupil was required to hand in a note-book containing the list of 



problems solved, a brief description of the method used, and the actual 



results obtained. These books showed good final results. Besides, each 



pupil had now received training which would enable him to solve any one 



of the problems again should he forget the answer. The pupils — both 



boys and girls — were also more interested in this than in any other part 



of the term's work in botany. 



Jean Broadhurst. 



New Jersey State Normal and Model Schools. 



