DEPARTMEJTT REPORTS. 67 



apple trees, taking up and setting out plants, large and small, repairing walks 

 and drives, several ways of grafting, crossing or hybridizing llowers, training 

 grapes, budding, layering, care of hot beds, testing seeds, proper use of tools. 

 and numerous other topics, best shown in the place where the objects are to be 

 found. An attempt is made to give all some practice in what is looked upon 

 us the most difficult and mysterious of horticultural operations. 



In some of the most important of the above, all the students have more 

 extended practice. About half the students of the Senior class have worked 

 all the year in the Horticultural Department. Some of the most important 

 part of the instruction is given separately to each of tiiese young men while 

 they are overseeing certain kinds of work. One Senior is set over some por- 

 tion of the department for the whole year. One looks especially after the 

 vineyard, one the apple orchard, one the orchard of pears, cherries, and 

 plums, another the trees on the lawn, another the drives and paths, one the 

 hot-beds, and a portion of the vegetable garden, one the wild garden, and test- 

 ing seeds, one the experimental and sample beds of grasses, clovers, etc., another 

 some portion of the vegetable garden. Whenever any work is done in each of 

 these places a Senior is there to act as an assistant foreman in directing the 

 labor of other students in the lower classes. 



These young men take an interest each in his own work which he superin- 

 tends the year through. They often work over time and at odd hours to finish 

 up something which needs attention. 



In addition to this oversight of work, most of these sub-foremen assist me 

 in making experiments. Besides these, members of the Junior class are 

 making experiments of their own accord on their own time. I will name a 

 few experiments which I know some of my students are making of their own 

 account in the Horticultural Department. 



One is crossing the llowers of wheat for new varieties, one crosses wild and 

 cultivated crab apples, two cross corn, two or three cross different sorts of 

 lilacs, one observes the duration of flowers of several kinds, one crosses toma- 

 toes, one observes the peculiarities in the germination of seeds, one monstrosi- 

 ties among flowers and plants, another layers apples, one studies parasitic 

 plants, another tries to discover how nature sows wild oats, one studies the 

 nodding of the heads of wheat, another the depth of the roots of barley and 

 oats, another sows seeds and raises plants of clover, the parent plant of which 

 bore many leaves which had four leaflets, another plants "buggy" peas and 

 those not buggy for comparison, another digs up stools of chess to 11 nd the old 

 kernels from which the jjlants grew. 



QUESTIONS IX HORTICULTURE. 



1. How would you select a good place for a garden? 



2. How would you start and treat tomatoes from the seed? 



3. How would you manage a compost heap? 



4. State a good way to construct and manage a hot-bed. 



5. State the chief difficulties in raising celery, 

 G. State how to set out and mulch strawberries, 



7. Name the leading points used in classifying apples, 



8. Give a short list of eight pears for Michigan, 



9. What is the best soil for plums, — best stock? How can the curculio be 

 successfuUv managed? 



10. State some one good wav of training grapes till the vines are five vears 

 old. 



