LECTURES AND ESSAYS READ AT INSTITUTES. 211 



AGRICULTUKE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS. 



BY MRS. R. F. JOHNSTONE. 



Our common schools are the boast and pride of every American citizen. In 

 them children of foreign parentage become practically Americans, with Amer- 

 ican instincts and predilections. The bias toward any business or belief or prac- 

 tice is best formed in early life. Religious propagandists understand this, and 

 are careful that the early training of children shall be under the direction and 

 influence of their particular sect or belief. The early Indians became hunters 

 and warriors through the practice of mimic warfare, and mimic exploits with 

 the bow and arrow, through the whole of the childhood of the youngsters. 

 Boys who are set to declaim or write essays at school, and are kept at it term 

 after term, very liliely develop into budding Byrons or embryo Homers, or 

 acquire a taste for stage, oratory, and statesmanship. If at school boys should 

 be set to whittling out jumping jacks, wood carvers would be more plenty, and 

 so with every business ; what the child practices he is likely to get a predilec- 

 tion for that will incline him toward it when he comes to manhood. If the 

 boy stands at the blackboard and illustrates continually practical examples in 

 commercial life, or figures out problems in insurance, or banking, or brokerage, 

 the wonder should not be why he should develop an early liking for trade, and 

 become dissatisfied with farm life, but why so many become farmers. He 

 can't see where he can apply the skill in which he has become an expert to the 

 processes of the farm. His father, if a farmer, never has submitted to him 

 a problem for solution that had reference to the business of the farm, and 

 indeed he would be as little prepared to aid him as he would to translate Choc- 

 taw from the rules in his arithmetic. Why algebra should be taken and 

 botany left out of the curriculum arranged for common schools cannot be 

 satisfactorily explained when it is known that 90 per cent, of the scholars 

 attending them are farmers' sons and daughters, and that the funds for their 

 support come largely from the tax on real estate owned by farmers. 



From the study of botany in the common schools there would very likely 

 develop experts in the science, who would take pride in naming all the strange 

 grasses and weeds which grow on the farm, and they could indicate the prob- 

 abilities of their usefulness, or otherwise. The common schools of the State 

 stand among, and are surrounded by botanical specimens illustrative of the 

 stud}', and no prettier sight could be met than a group of boys and misses with 

 hands full of grasses and plants, discussing their classification and names. 

 Vegetable life is now so little known and understood among farmers, that the 

 grossest mistakes are often made through ignorance of the laws governing it. 

 A knowledge of physical botany would explain how plants are influenced by 

 the several agencies of light, heat, air, and moisture. It describes their vari- 

 ous secretions, and the nutriment afforded by the soil. It explains the circu- 

 lation of sap in a plant, and shows how its structure is built up from the salts 

 in solution, sent along its veins to the leaves, where the pure water is evapo- 

 rated and the thickened sap returns to form stem, leaf, flower, and fruit, and 

 the root itself. All this knowledge pertains directly to the business of farm- 

 ing. A skillful botanist would delight in applying his skill to the practice of 

 out door life on a farm. If the mind can be pleasantly occupied while the 

 hands are busy, labor is shorn of its terrors, and the mental sag in the intel- 



