Supplement to 



S^unior IRaturalist /Iftontbl^ 



Published by the College of Agriculture of Cornell 

 University, from October to May, and entered at 

 Ithaca as second'Class matter. L. H. Bailey, Director 



ALICE Q. McCLOSKEY. Editor 



New Series. Vol. 2. ITHACA, N. Y., JANUARY, 1906. 



No. 4 



UNCLE JOHN'S TALK WITH THE GARDENERS 



My dear A'icces and Ncphezvs: 



Do yon know anybody ^vho makes his own living? I do not mean 

 "earns" or "gets" his hving, — that is common enough, — but one who 

 reahy makes his hving. 



Did Robinson Crusoe make his own hving during his lonely life on 

 the island of Juan Fernandez? He found fruits, and skins of goats. He 

 cooked one so that it gave him sustaining food, and he shaped the other 

 in a way that gave him protective clothing. As a matter of fact, he 



neither made breadfruit nor 

 ' goatskins. What he did was 

 to change their form in a way 

 that suited his convenience. 

 Both were made before he 

 gathered them. 



There have been men who 

 have accomplished great things 

 and have been held in honor 

 for hundreds of years, because 

 of their wdsdom and power, 

 but not one of them was able 

 to do more toward making 



his own food than was Robin- 

 FiG. I. — ^4 boy's laboratory. Testing for starch Crucnp 



with iodine. ^°" v_rusoe. 



What I have just said has 

 been to awaken your minds and set you to thinking. Little bodies can 

 do great things. Plant life — even the weeds and grass at our feet — can 

 do one thing that even the wisest men who ever lived cannot do, 



Plants derive their liz'ing front inorganic matter 



This line sounds as though I had copied it from a book on chemistry. 



]\Iany of my boys and girls will not understand what is meant. That is 



the very reason that I have brought up the subject at this time, so that 



v^e can have a talk about the meaning of organic and inorganic matter. 



4-'3 



