Cornell Study Clubs 



1215 



the people must suffer in health and in pocket ; and a knowledge of the best 

 ways to help or to hinder their growth and increase should be a part of 

 the teaching in every country school in the land. 



How to make the garden more productive and profitable than it ever 

 has been; how to make and manage hotbeds, cold frames, and pits; the 

 right ways to sow and plant and transplant ; the right ways of cultivation 

 and reasons for them ; how to recognize plants when seedlings and to know 

 when a plant is a weed ; how to know friends from foes among the insect and 

 animal life, and how best to 

 preserve the one and destroy the 

 other; above all, how to 

 appreciate and enjoy the glory 

 and beauty of the new-clad 

 earth and so govern the work 

 of one's hands on it that it 

 may become still more beautiful 

 and fruitful : these are problems 

 nearly as important to the 

 individual pupil and to the 

 community of which he is a 

 part as is the mastery of the 

 three R's. 



Even though the teacher of 

 the rural school may feel a lack 

 of preparation for this work, it 

 may nevertheless be under- 

 taken and very successfully 

 carried out, with the help of 

 some good textbook on ele- 

 mentary agriculture. 



FiG. 71. 



■Tlie best Easter Lily, the so-caitcd 

 " Bcniiiida " 



Siiidy of bird life 



Children who have watched and fed the resident birds during the winter 

 will be the first to note when their numbers are augmented by the first 

 comers from the South, or by stray visitors from the North whom hunger 

 has driven to the milder regions for a short time. These rarer visitants 

 give but a fleeting glimpse of themselves, but that only increases one's 

 delight in meeting them ; and to have seen and identified pine grosbeaks 

 or red crossbills in the evergreens, or horned larks along the weedy fields 

 or roadsides, is a pleasure long to be remembered. 



If a strong sentiment in favor of the birds as " desirable citizens " can 

 be wrought into the minds of the young folk while their joy at the first 



