No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 135 



and cherry trees than to have him acquire a knowledge of the fungus 

 — the microscopical parasitic plant, that is preying upon his trees, 

 repeatedly throwing oli' thousands of invisible spores by which the 

 disease spreads and becomes so prevalent, destructive and unsightly. 

 But this is only one of many plant diseases which, when we under- 

 stand their nature, we may intelligently treat and overcome. The 

 modern botany I am recommending for the farm considers these 

 parasitic fungi and leads our thought into a know^ledge of the myriad 

 forms of cryptogamous plants which are to-day such a potent 

 factor in determining the success or failure of almost any agri- 

 cultural or horticultural crop. 



Even a very limited study of botany will dispel from our minds 

 those legends and false notions about plants that should be buried 

 with the nineteenth century. The United Slates, so far in advance 

 of other nations in many respects, the cynosure of all foreign eyes, 

 could have removed from her agricultural communities those black 

 stains of foreign superstitution about plant life, if we would all 

 study botany. How often we hear echoes of the ancient notion ex- 

 pressed in the following rhyme: 



"Sow peas and beans in the wane of the moon; 

 Who soweth them sooner, he soweth too soon.; 

 That they with the planet may rest and rise, 

 And flourish with bearing, most plentiful wise." 



How^ frequently, too, we meet farmers who insist that chess or 

 cheat in their wheat fields sprang from good wheat seed. Such ab- 

 surdity is not very unlike the common association of plants in witch- 

 craft so prevalent in the rural districts of European countries. 



TRAININO FOR OUR LIFE WORK. 



By BNOS H. HESS, State College, Pa. 



Before we discuss the proper training for a life-work, we should 

 first determine what our life-work is to be. There are but few^ ques- 

 tions which confront a young man that are of more importance 

 than this one. Nature has given us the power by which w^e can 

 become successful in some certain line; then let us follow^ out na- 



