How TO Teach Horticulture. 161 



enjoyment of those days, we are doing the best possible 

 thing we can for them. The prominent thin^ is to teach 

 them those things that cannot be taught in the schools. 

 You cannot teach all of horticulture or all of agriculture in 

 schools, but you can teach children to observe things that 

 are about them and so be better fitted to learn when they 

 are in school. Now, I know lots of good people who have- 

 married, and had children, and who understood a good 

 many facts regarding horticulture, but never dreamed of 

 telling those things to their children. I have known lots of 

 ladies skilled in the use of the piano who, after they were 

 married, neglected to open that piano for years and years. 

 It is the same thing in either case. They are forgetful of 

 the wants of their children. I am bound to teach my little 

 boy, and all the children that are about me, the things in 

 which I was most interested when I was a child, and that I 

 did not get the information about as early as I ought to 

 have received it. 



Now as to incentives: It is a beautiful thing to say to a 

 child, here " Dolly has got a calf, and John, you can have 

 that calf for yours." Of course John is very much pleased 

 to think he is going to have the calf; he pats it and watches 

 it grow; it is John's calf and he takes all the interest possi- 

 ble in the growth of that animal, but by and by it is not 

 John's calf but dad's cow, and that spoils it all. If you give 

 a child anything give it to him for his very own always. I 

 say to my little boy, " there is a little patch of ground. I 

 have been telling you how to grow strawberries and 

 raspberries and you can grow anything you please 

 on that ground, and I will help you all I can;" and I 

 would tell him also, "all you can get from that land 

 I will help you to sell, and if there is anything on the 

 land that we want in the family, we will buy it of you." I 

 know in that manner I shall induce that child to more 

 earnest work than I could in almost any othey way. I 

 would follow this work from the nursery to the school. I 

 said that you cannot teach horticulture in the schools, and 

 you cannot. You can have text-books, and that is about all 

 you can do, but I do not believe that you can teach horticul- 

 11— H. 



