162 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



A striking proof of this is found in the fact, for which I 

 have the authority of more than one German physician, that 

 nervous diseases are rapidly increasing among women in Ger- 

 many. This is largely to be attributed to the exciting school 

 life. 



Admirable as the Prussian system of schools is in its intel- 

 lectual processes, it fails to recognize the divine laws for the 

 development of life and health. It is part of the machinery 

 which cramps the individual to perfect the system. That cul- 

 ture which makes soldiers of men and invalids of women, is 

 not the perfect model for our republican institutions. 



Contact with the vegetable world seems to be nature's cor- 

 rective for excessive mental action in any direction. The touch 

 of mother-earth renews strength and energy exhausted in life's 

 hardest conflicts. 



As the air is purified by the life and growth of plants ; as 

 the water is kept sweet by the balance of animal and vegetable 

 life, so the fresh, unspoiled life of nature seems to renew 

 human life, to cool its feverish heat, restore its wasted energy, 

 and bring it anew into harmony with the universal order of 

 things. 



Gardening requires simple, healthful habits. It is now as in 

 paradise that the freshness of the morning invites to labor — 



" Awake ! the morning shines, and the fresh field 

 Calls us ; we lose the prime to mark how spring 

 Our tender plants ; how blows the citron grove ; 

 What drops the myrrh, and what the balmy reed ; 

 How nature paints her colors, how the bee 

 Sits on the bloom, extracting liquid sweet." 



The gardener must be up early in the morning, but she need 

 not keep midnight vigils ; her charges go early to sleep and 

 will not awaken her with their cries. Even the greenhouse is 

 not kept so hot as our sitting-rooms and workshops. The 

 plants are as sensitive to coal gas as our children's lungs, and 

 will show the presence of bad air by unmistakable signs. But 

 it is the out-door life of gardening which is most precious. It 

 is not, as some suppose, confined to a few short weeks of sum- 

 mer ; but from the first of April, or even earlier, when the snow- 

 drop begins to droop its modest head, to the last of November, 

 when the golden chrysanthemum gathers up the glory of the 



