162 Wisconsin State Horticultural Society. 



ture by text-books. I believe there never ought to be a teacher 

 go into our country schools who cannot teach the children 

 about the common things around them that touch upon ag- 

 riculture and horticulture. I have been a school inspector. 

 There are thirteen schools in my township, and I took the 

 summer time to visit them because I wanted to see the 

 the township at that season, and I wanted to see thej chil- 

 dren out at play. It is a pet theory of mine that there 

 should not be a tree in the neighborhood that the children 

 do not know the name of, and also that they should know 

 the names of all the flowers, and so I tested them a little, 

 and [ found out there was but one out of the thirteen schools 

 that knew even the common name of the violet. That is 

 saying a good deal. I was ashamed. Some said they were 

 Johnnie-jump-ups, but none called them violets. I do not 

 know but we are unusually ignorant over in Michigan, I 

 found many children who knew more than their teachers 

 about trees. I found lots of children that did not know the 

 difference between an oak and a maple. I found there was 

 a deplorable absence of information among the teachers. I 

 should be ashamed not to know about those things if I were 

 a teacher. 



It seemed to me that something must be done about it, 

 and so I went before our horticultural society and said that 

 it was a shame that our teachers did not know anything 

 about the common facts of horticulture, and that we ought 

 to do something. We considered the subject and concluded 

 the first thing to do was to get the children to do something 

 themselves. A few of us went as a committee and pre- 

 sented the matter in the best way possible to the superin- 

 tendent, but he said he was not elected to do that work. We 

 ■could do nothing there. We went before the board of educa- 

 tion with no better success, and we finally went to work our- 

 selves. We got out a publication upon the subject of the de- 

 sirability of bringing about in the schools a knowledge of the 

 common things of the woods and of fruits and flowers that 

 the children might become acquainted with them and know 

 their uses in matters of ornamentation and decoration of 

 the school grounds. We made suggestions. We scattered 



