have we yet learned what necessity is put on the land by a crowded pop- 

 ulation ; vacant areas are large and settled areas yield well with more 

 or less careless or unscientific treatment. 



Our people and our teachers are not ready for the formal, organized 

 garden. It is not possible to suddenly graft part of an educational sys- 

 tem of one country on to the system of a country very different. Edu- 

 cational systems are expressions of national tendencies working through 

 many years. They are shaped by many forces, political, racial, indus- 

 trial and religious. These tendencies and forces leading to the intro- 

 duction of such things as manual training, gardening, etc., into our 

 primary and secondary schools are not acknowledged at the present 

 time by many in our Province. Or at any rate, the acknowledgment has 

 not reached the point of adoption and establishment. The truth is, there 

 has been very recently great changes in educational aims, methods and 

 equipment, to which we have not adjusted ourselves. We will probably 

 be the better for making any new adjustment that has to be made, 

 slowly. Over zeal may work ultimately to less and slower progress than 

 guarded procedure. 



The ordinary rural school as at present constituted can not very 

 well nor wisely undertake a school garden. The subject deserves better 

 than hasty, inconsiderate adoption. There are many difficulties to face; 

 there are indifferent parents, antagonistic trustees, unprepared and 

 changing teachers, crowded programmes of study, and the unsolved 

 summer vacation problem. It will be well to go slow; we can do naught 

 else in comfort and safety. The time may come when the country school 

 becomes a centre for the spread of the arts and sciences in its district. 

 It will have a teacher's home in connection with it, and the tenure of the 

 teacher's office will be for his life. Or it may be that the consolidation 

 ' of schools will raise the school to its proper place. In either case, the 

 school garden will be part of the equipment. We are not dealing with 

 a possibility, however, but with a condition. 



Much, however, can be done in home experimental plots and home 

 gardens, and they will naturally lead in due course to school plots and 

 school gardens ; and the time will be when teachers and people are ready 

 for them. There is a right time for everything. The work of the Ex- 

 perimental Union will aid in the first kind of gardening, and such work 

 as done by the St. Thomas and Cleveland schools may aid in shaping 

 the second. 



THE ONTARIO AGRICULTURAL AND EXPERIMENTAL UNION. 



Our purpose is to introduce the work on agriculture, forestry, and 

 horticulture only. The experimenting in chemistry and poultry is of a 

 restricted character, and is not adapted to public schools. It is offered 

 as a practical side of the nature study work. It may be said that making 

 it practical deprives it of the right to be called nature study. We shall 

 not quarrel about its name. It is good for boys and girls ; it is good for 

 the grown-ups, too, and the function of the school is to concern itself 



