324 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



When, with boyish curiosity, a thousand times I watched the fish 

 gracefully poise themselves and move at will in the streams of my Vir- 

 ginia home, a very little intelligent direction from the school would 

 have enabled me to learn from observation that fishes use their fins 

 principally in balancing, their tail in propulsion, and their air-bladder 

 in ascending and descnding. A like direction in childhood would 

 have led me to improve my many opportunities of observing the chinch 

 bug, the weevil and the Hessian tly ; to compare the grain before and 

 after the arrival of these pests, and to study their habits and methods, 

 that I might have contributed my might toward the mitigation of these 

 pests. Witness Prof. Snow's discovery that chinch-bugs are subject 

 to epidemic diseases, and by distributing a few of the sick bugs in a 

 field, through spread of the«disease these pests may be destroyed by 

 the millions. Our institutions of higher learning spend large sums on 

 apparatus and laboratory, while our many common schools lament the 

 poverty that deprives them of such equipment; yet behold the wealth 

 of equipment supplied by lavish nature, alike to the rich and the poor ! 

 What volumes of illustrated intruction in the spring shower, the 

 winter snow, the chattering brook, the rising sap, the bursting buds, 

 the floating clouds, the over arching canopy ! What time so opportune 

 for the study of the artistic structure of the snow-flake and the marvel 

 of the condensation and precipitation of moisture as during a shower 

 or a snow or hail-storm? No lapse of time will ever efface the memory 

 of that ecstasy with which, in childish glee, we watched the pattering 

 rain, or, with face skyward, we feasted upon the countless snow-flakes 

 — near and far — noiselessly making their way earthward in obedience 

 to the laws of gravity. 



The future course of study in nature, in the common schools, will 

 consist of topics from the three kingdoms of nature suited to the 

 tastes and capabilities of the learner at the different stages of his 

 development — the topics from the three kingdoms chosen with refer- 

 ence to the locality of the school, and those from the vegetable and 

 animal kingdoms also with reference to the seasons or months of the 

 year, so that whether inland or on the seacoast, in December or May, 

 there would be the most perfect correspondence between the instruc- 

 tion of the school-room and the dominant life of the neighborhood. 

 Each season, each month, each day, would bring its dominant natural 

 phenomena. The.pages of this great book of nature are ever open to 

 him that would read ; and best of all, it has its primer, its fifth reader 

 and its advanced literature, its objective and subjective pages. It has 

 its lessons for the superficial observer and for the philosopher, for in- 

 fancy, for manhood and womanhood, and for tottering age. 



