Home Nature-Study Course. 383 



Correlation on the Study of Evergreens With Other Studies. 



With history. — In glancing across the wood-covered hills of New- 

 York State one often sees stretching far above the other trees the 

 gaunt top of an old, white pine. Such pine trees belong to the forests 

 primeval, and may have attained the age of two centuries or more; 

 they stand there looking out over the world, relics of another age 

 when America belonged to the red men, and the bear and the panther 

 played or fought beneath them. The cedars live longer even than 

 do the pines, often reaching the age of three hundred years. 



Perhaps nothing so naturally turns the attention of the pupil to 

 past events than the thought that the life of such a tree has spanned 

 so much of human history. If you have one of these old trees in 

 your vicinity make its life-history the center of a story of local 

 history; let the pupils find when the town was first settled by whites, 

 and where they came from; what Indian tribes roamed the woods 

 before that, and what animals were common in the forests then. 

 Bring out the chief events in the history of the county and township; 

 when were they established and for whom or what were they named. 

 What are the industries of the present village or township, and are 

 they the same as they were a hundred years ago. 



With geography. — Where are the cone-bearing trees most numerous? 

 To what chraates and soils are they best adapted? Why? (Roth, 

 pp. 32-40.) Where are the forests of cone-bearing trees found in 

 America? (Roth, p. 211.) How is the pine used to reclaim the sea- 

 shore in France? (Roth, p. 198.) Is there a difference in the species 

 of conifers that live in Florida, and those of. the Rocky Mountains 

 and northern Michigan? (Roth, pp. 154-158.) 



With industrial geography. — What is the difference between hard 

 and soft woods and what are their uses? In building a house which 

 of the evergreens are used for the timber and which for the floors 

 and finishing, and where do they come from? Describe how and 

 where the following industries are carried on: Lumbering, Wood 

 pulp. Resin and Turpentine; Tar making; Use of tan bark. Why 

 is lumber so high priced at present? 



With arithmetic. — One branch of Austrian, pitch or white pine 

 will be of as much use in teaching addition, subtraction, multiplica- 

 tion and division in the elementary grades as any apparatus ever 

 devised by ingenious educators. In fact these leaves are grouped 

 in 2's, 3's and 5's as if specially arranged for an arithmetic class. 

 The cone also affords opportunities for counting and multiplying. 

 If there are two seeds beneath each scale, how many are there in the 

 entire cone, etc.? The cone itself when closed invites to higher 



