36 agricui^ture; of maine;. 



work of fifteen minutes at a time, take up a special subject, and 

 out of it would come rest and change in the work, and at the 

 same time very important and valuable information. 



Everywhere we went this suggestion was heartily accepted 

 by the pupils and teachers and boards of education. After fif- 

 teen or twenty minutes, sometimes more, given along these lines 

 of nature study teaching, the children from those schools would 

 go -out from the adjournment with a bound because of the dif- 

 ference which had come over them during these sessions. In- 

 stead of going out physically or mentally tired, the change of 

 work, the change of thought, sent them out from that school 

 building in very much better condition. 



The result was this : Before this work was finished in West- 

 chester County, there came applications from thirty-five coun- 

 ties in the State of New York from school superintendents and 

 boards of education, to bring the same kind of work to them. 



I will give you one or two illustrations of what was the result 

 of this teaching in Westchester County. In dealing with plants 

 I very often chose the clover plant because I know so much 

 the value of that and realize its importance everywhere. There 

 were farmers who came to these schools, and said that for the 

 first time in their lives did they understand how and why clover 

 benefited the land. They said that if they could have had such 

 instruction as that when they were boys, their whole history of 

 farming would have been much diflferent from what it had 

 been. They hadn't realized its importance and hadn't been 

 persistent enough in trying to cultivate it. 



Another lesson which I gave was on the strawberry, and I 

 made this ofifer to the children, — that to every boy and girl who 

 would be interested to study further the strawberry plant, I 

 would agree, if they would write me the following spring, to 

 send a half dozen strawberry plants for them to put out, care 

 for, and study about. Then they should bring to the public 

 school a composition on what they had learned about that plant. 

 I sent out over 25,000 strawberry plants to the public school 

 children that year. 



What followed the sending out of these plants? I received 

 from the teachers of the schools some of the essays upon straw- 

 berry culture, little essays or compositions written by children 

 not more than seven years of age, and from that up to seven- 



