FORTY-FOURTH ANNUAL REPORT. 87 



things. If the}' had them growing around their homes and schools they 

 would come to know them like friends. The bulbs will stay there year 

 after year. The Bible text says : "It is more blessed to give than to 

 receive." The neighborhood that undertakes anything of this kind will 

 find itself repaid many fold, they will have pride in their school, and 

 the children wnll be growing up amid a natural and refining scenery. 



Another thing that ought to be done is to go to the woods and cut 

 out some of the native shrubs and trees of all the diff'erent varieties and 

 j)lant them along the roadside. Unfortunately, under our present law 

 ordering the cutting of brush a great many of our most beautiful shrub's 

 along the highways have been cut. If we do this, then we should have 

 beautiful country roads, like parks, again. Now, as you drive along 

 you see numberless places where shrubs and trees ought to be, but where 

 there is nothing but bare space. It is so all over the state. People 

 have been so busy farming that they have forgotten the beauty of the 

 school and the road. I notice that a paper sent out by the Grange states 

 that they are taking up this school work to some extent. It is a beau- 

 tiful work for the women of the Grange to have taken up, and I believe 

 that you will find in your own community many people who had wished 

 to do it, but did not want to take the initiative. It seems to me that 

 the best thing to do would be to go to the director of the school and 

 the teacher, and make up a committee to work with the scliools for a 

 while. The schools are going to change very rapidly. The state of 

 Michigan has the proud honor of having the first forty-acre school farm. 

 One school in the northern peninsula is going to run for the year round. 

 It is going to have its blacksmithing department in the basement, and 

 it is going to teach everything that people of that vicinity want to 

 study. I believe it is a lost opportunity for any school not to teach 

 the things that ought to be taught. This can easily be done by co-opera- 

 tion. I think one ought not to take this improvement too seriously. 

 Make up school picnics to bring about the improvements, and have a good 

 time while doing the work. Let the children look over the ground and 

 find suitable places for certain things — for example, let them look over 

 Ihe situation and if a good place can be found for hazel nuts, and let 

 them do that kind of planting in the fall. The hazel nut is a beautiful 

 shrub, and if put in the right place would greatly improve the spot 

 in beauty. If the children plant the hazel nuts on a down-grade of the 

 road they will be putting this shrub in an ideal place, where it can do 

 no damage, and will be doing a good public service in keeping soil from 

 shifting, and so saving work for repairs. The committee and the child- 

 ren of the neighborhood can be on the watch for places that need at- 

 tention, and also for places to preserve as nature has provided them. 

 If the children will go to the woods and gather dogwood, sassafras and 

 sumac and put them in proper places along the roadside, they will 

 presently see that their whole neighborhood is glorious again with beau- 

 ty. The community ought to get about it and help to do those things 

 so that the children will know what they are worth, and at the same 

 time have a good time learning to plant them. 



One other thing I want to speak about is the State Parks. We cer- 

 tainly have beautiful, beautiful varieties of landscape in this state — 

 we have white sand hills along the lake; we have pine trees one hundred 

 and seventy- feet high ; hardwood forests, ravines, and even a few beau- 



