AGRICULTURE IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 11 



on which health and life depend, is not taught, but algebra is. 

 So our young wives prefer boarding to house-keeping, since 

 they can work quadratives but not the kneading trough ; they 

 can explain the binomial theorem, but not the nature and 

 action of yeast. It is no fault of theirs. It is the fault of the 

 system. 



Our modes of education are defective, and need renovation. 

 Boys and girls should be taught in school the science of agri- 

 culture and cooking, as they are now taught arithmetic and 

 grammar. They should understand from germination to matu- 

 rity, the process of growth and the food of every crop, every 

 vegetable raised. Its parts and the uses of each part in its 

 growth should be known to them as well as the uses of the 

 parts of their own bodies, — their hands, their feet, their eyes, 

 their ears. They should know, moreover, all the weeds on the 

 farm, their character and relative damage to crops, and how to 

 exterminate them. These subjects should be thoroughly taught 

 and illustrated in their schools. The young mind thus becomes 

 interested in future pursuits, and enters upon them not as a 

 task but as a pleasure. Labor thus becomes a profession, not 

 a servitude ; it becomes attractive as any other art, more than 

 many now sought for. Botany, or the study of plants, grains, 

 vegetables, should be a prominent study in our common schools; 

 commenced with the alphabet, and continued to graduation, so 

 that every boy and girl fourteen years of age can not only tell 

 the growth and food of every grain, and grass, and vegetable, 

 but also just what soil, and season, and fertilizers are best for it. 

 Chemistry, also, should be studied from the earliest period till 

 the latest, as we now study arithmetic and geography. It is 

 vastly more important to a person to know the prime gases, 

 than the prime numbers ; the circulation of oxygen is something 

 much more necessary to be understood than the circulation of 

 decimals; and unlike fractions, many persons reduce their 

 farms to the lowest terms, because they haven't learned how to 

 do it. Chemistry should be studied till the composition of 

 every soil and its adaptation to grains and grasses and vegetables 

 is understood, just as well as the adaptation of the stomach of 

 the horse, the ox, the camel, the fowl, to their different kinds 

 of food and methods of digestion, is understood. 



