186 BOARD OF AGRICULTUEE. [Jan., 



vocation is a continuous succession of experiments directed to 

 some end. The child on the farm learns how to work, how to do, 

 how to question nature by experiment, how to adapt means to 

 ends, how to plan work in order to reach desired results. Before 

 the farmer's child has learned his A B C he has begun to experi- 

 ment with nature in directions the city child reaches only in later 

 years, if indeed he ever does; and these actual experiments go 

 along with opportunities for observation such as the ordinary city 

 child rarely has, and usually never has. 



I was grown to manhood, yes, older than that, before it even 

 occurred to me that many children in our great cities became 

 large enough and old enough to be found in the schools who 

 had never seen the sun rise, nor set; who had never seen the 

 moon except when high in the sky, had never seen it creep up from 

 the distant horizon, large and bright and round; indeed, whose 

 only idea of the horizon was the houses that shut out the view 

 from every side. Children in the schools that did not know that 

 potatoes grow in the ground and apples on trees, that butter was 

 made from milk and milk came from cows, and so on through that 

 curious list of facts which have been brought out by investigation 

 in late years as to the actual knowledge possessed by young chil- 

 dren in the great city schools. My attention was turned to this 

 some years ago, and I picked up some most suggestive information, 

 but I never made any systematic investigation; in fact, I never had 

 a chance to. But that has lately been done with great ingenuity 

 and labor, and with most instructive i-esults. To those of you 

 who may be interested in this part of our subject, I commend an 

 article by Prof. G. Stanley Hall, on -'The Contents of Children's 

 Minds" (^Princeton Revieiv, May, 1883, p. 249). However interest- 

 ing this subject may be in this connection, I have not time to 

 follow it further, suflBce it to say, that it is the opinion of scientists 

 that many of the fancies and sentiments which go with us through 

 life are the composite impressions stamped on the bram in very 

 early childhood, shaping our thoughts and influencing our beliefs 

 and doings all through adult life. 



In this, country life and country scenes play a part greater than 

 has heretofore been thought of. It is found by teachers in city 

 schools, that with the children of cities, a few days in the country 

 often has an eduational value beyond a term in the best of schools. 

 Even as a basis for a literary career, it i$ an experience, if not 



