260 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



result was that the corn taken care of over winter averaged a ger- 

 minating power of 95 per cent., while that which had been left out 

 in the field averaged only 33 per cent. TTiese are some of the things 

 that those girls and boys are doing. They are getting their rudi- 

 mentary problems in this way, and at the same time acquiring a 

 practical knowledge of agriculture. 



When they study live stock, they go out to the farms who have 

 this live stock; they study the features that distinguish the breed 

 of the different animals in the animals themselves. For instance, 

 a farmer in the neighborhood had a large number of Yorkshires, 

 and they went there to study the animals. 



One thing they did that was of benefit to the entire community 

 was the demonstration of spraying orchards a year ago. Quite a 

 number of orchards were visited in the course of their spraying 

 demonstrations. There were old orchards all around there that 

 were not producing much fruit, and the principal made arrange- 

 ments with the farmers to have their spraying outfit and their 

 pruning outfit purchased by the State, and the spraying took place. 

 These spraying demonstrations were attended by many farmers, 

 and were of practical value not only to the school, but to the farmers, 

 as well. The trees were pruned, and sprayed for the San Jos6 

 Seale with the lime, sulphur and salt mixture; a little later on they 

 used the Bordeaux mixture, and as the result of those demonstra- 

 tions, two or three other orchards were sprayed last spring, and 

 another this spring, and these sprayings have proven of great value 

 to the orchards. 



The pupils appreciate that school, and the community there at 

 Calvert Centre appreciate it; the first year they paid the principal 

 eight hundred dollars for seven months work, and expended in all 

 twelve hundred dollars. This year they give him sixteen hundred 

 dollars, simply as an evidence of their appreciation of that kind of 

 teaching. They appropriated eight thousand dollars for a new 

 schoolhouse, and got from the Legislature an appropriation of two 

 thousand to aid in the management of that school. It shows that 

 the people appreciate the value of this kind of teaching. 



Now, in Pennsylvania there is the other of the two schools that 

 have been called to the attention of the National Educational Asso- 

 ciation; it is one of the two schools that we were asked to visit this 

 spring and report upon. It was called to their attention simply and 

 solely because it is a wonder in the work it is doing for the benefit 

 of the community. It is located, as most of you know before I tell 

 you, at Waterford, a little village of about fifteen hundred in- 

 habitants, and is conducted in connection with the township high 

 school. It is conducted in an old school building of two stories 

 and four rooms — two schoolrooms and a laboratory and recitation 

 room. In this little school, which was erected at the cost of pro- 

 bably between twenty-four and twenty-nine hundred dollars, we 

 have an example of the most successful agricultural teaching. They 

 follow the same plan as they do at Calvert, of studying the plant 

 and the animal, and using the text-book simply as "notes. They 

 have their little laboratory, where they study the things pertaining 

 to agriculture, and make nearly all of their own apparatus, and 

 perform their own experiments, I never saw a lot of boys and 



