148 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



bloom was presented through the season. It is hardly necessary to add that 

 the school itself "was conspicuous for the progress made by the pupils in their 

 studies and for the improvement of their character, under this civilizing influ- 

 ence. 



In answer to the otlier inquiries, — the fences for the boundaries should be 

 strong euougli to protect the ground from farm animals in neighboring fields, 

 and if an irregular belt of small trees lined the interior they would present an 

 ornamental appearance. The kind of trees to plant and the arrangement is 

 too extensive a subject to treat in these brief rema;'ks, but much may be 

 learned by seeing well laid out and well planted private grounds. 



If in addition to what is here suggested, the teacher could give some instruc- 

 tion in the leading principles of botany, illustrated by the trees and plants in 

 sight, and could explain and show something of vegetable physiology in its 

 application to germination and growth, to transplanting, pruning, bud- 

 ding and grafting, and encourage all the experiments practicable, to be per- 

 formed by the students, useful instruction might be easily imparted which 

 would be valuable through their lives. 



A WORD FROM DR. JOII^" A. WARDER. 



Dr. "Warder, in reply to the letter of inquiry, said the subject was one in 

 which he was deeply interested, and one upon which he would like to express 

 his views, but the demands of other associations with which he was connected 

 in an official capacity, were such as to prevent his giving any time to the mat- 

 ter beyond the briefest reply to each of the six questions asked, which are given 

 below : 



1. All fences are an abomination. The school lot should be the village or 

 district park, and open. 



2. Trees should be adapted to the soil and climate as well as to the space. 



3. The plantations should bo arranged according to correct principles of 

 landscape gardening. 



4. The trees and plants should be treated as if ^^ they were living beings that you 

 loved, and desired to make or teach others to love them also. 



5. Flowers should be treated and presented to the pupils and public upon 

 the same footing as trees. 



6. In teacliing they should all be employed as exemplars of nature's bounty 

 and beauty, and as evidences of Divine goodness and wisdom, by using them 

 and their several parts as illustrations of forms, of fitness, of design, and gen- 

 erally as means of awakening the infantile and adolescent powers of observa- 

 tion. They should be eye openers, points for comparison, means of awakening 

 thought and ratiocination. Katural objects are among the best educational 

 means. 



0PI:N"I0X FROM THE FLORAL CABIXET. 



The Ladies' Floral Cabinet for September contains an article with so many 

 good things in it that we are constrained to abstract as follows in this con- 

 nection : 



"We have always been advocates of gardens for children ; not gardens which 

 they might call theirs, and from which they could gather flowers and fruit only 

 by permission, but such as they could tend and cultivate with their own hands, 

 and the produce of which should be tlieir "very own," so that they might do 

 what they pleased with it. It is in this way that the child will learn to love 

 the work for its own sake, and to teach a child to love nature is to bestow upon 



