SCHOOL BOTANY 



Agricultural Schools. — As a nation we are fast get- 

 ting over the idea that anybody can succeed at farming. The 

 business of getting the most out of the soil in the way of crops, 

 is now known to be a matter of much science, and high schools, 

 colleges and universities are rapidly adding agriculture to the 

 list of courses. In 1908 there were 545 institutions giving 

 such courses, but in the past two years the number has nearly 

 doubled being now 875. Thirty-eight high schools have al- 

 ready introduced agricultural courses and the next few years 

 seem destined to see many more such institutions give atten- 

 tion to this subject. 



Information Versus Thought. — How do you yourself 

 stand on this question? Is your idea of a good student, that 

 of a good "receptacle?" Do you regard your instructors as 

 useful grain-hoppers whose duty it is to gather kernels of wis- 

 dow from all sources and direct them into your receptive mind ? 

 Are you content to be a sort of psychic Sacculina, a vegetative 

 animal, your mind a vast sack of two apertures, one for the 

 incurrent and the other for the outcurrent of predigested ideas ? 

 If so, all your mental organs of combat and locomotion will 

 atrophy. Do you put your faith in reading or in book knowl- 

 edge? If so, you should know that not a five foot shelf of 

 books nor even the ardent reading of a fifty foot shelf aided by 

 a prodigious memory will give you that enviable thing called 

 culture because the yard-stick of this precious quality is not 

 what you take in, but what you give out and this, from the sub- 

 tile chemistry of your brain, must have passed through a 



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