is encouraged officially, but up to the present it has been little practised. 

 Our teachers are not prepared for it, and our people have not felt the 

 need of it. It is to give our teachers a natural opportunity for training 

 themselves in this educational work, and our people for testing its value, 

 that we introduce the Ontario Agricultural and Experimental Union to 

 their notice. 



But the school gardening that it is sought to incorporate into Ameri- 

 can and Canadian schools at large is something different. At any rate, 

 it is generally so described. Its most important side is not economic. 

 It cares less about the welfare of the State and more about developing 

 the powers of the individual child. The garden and the products are 

 secondary; the results to the child's character are of prime importance. 

 So we may have poor school gardens but good school gardening. The 

 child may not learn to prune, graft, cross-fertilize, spray, or prepare soil 

 scientifically, but he should come out from the work observant, careful, 

 considerate, and equipped with general tendencies good for him in his 

 life's work or in his life's leisure. It is not to make him an agriculturist, 

 an horticulturist or a forester. It is a general culture, and not a tech- 

 nical training. It makes for love of home and love of nature. In the 

 crowded city, it satisfies a hunger for the quiet rest of the country ; in 

 the lonely country it furnishes a satisfying and wholesome companion- 

 ship. 



To all who practice in this garden work there comes the uplift that 

 arises from directing and controlling Nature's processes in the produc- 

 tion of a wholesome vegetable or a beautiful flower. It is disciplinary 

 and cultural education, not technical. 



The gospel of this kind of school gardening finds expression in Pro- 

 fessor L. H. Bailey's "The Nature Study Idea": 



"I dropped a seed into the earth. It grew, and the plant was mine. 



"It was a wonderful thing, this plant of mine. I did not know its 

 name, and the plant did not bloom. All I know is that I planted some- 

 thing apparently as lifeless as a grain of sand, and there came forth a 

 green and living thing unlike the seed, unlike the soil in which it grew. 

 No one could tell me why it grew, nor how. It had secrets all its own, 

 secrets that baffle the wisest men ; yet this plant was my friend. It faded 

 when I withheld the light, it wilted when I neglected to give it water, 

 it flourished when I supplied its simple needs. One week I went away 

 on a vacation, and when I returned the plant was dead; and I missed it. 



"Although my little plant had died so soon, it had taught me a les- 

 son; and the lesson is that it is worth while to have a plant." 



Of course, there are projects for the more technical agricultural edu- 

 cation in our rural public schools and the Agricultural High Schools and 

 Consolidated Rural Schools yet to be. And in localities in some old 

 settled parts, where specialization has developed, the European phase 

 may soon become evident. But for some years to come, the general 

 motives for this study in this country will be that outlined by Professor 

 Bailey. It is the natural motive in our kind of democracy, and in a land 

 of our material resources. The safety of the State has little concern 

 with us ; the promotion of tne individual's welfare is untrammelled. Nor 



