SECRETARY'S PORTFOLIO. 535 



showing has sufficed, after the ground was prepared for them. Just expla- 

 nation enough to account for the need of stirring the soil, keeping robber 

 plants (weeds) from growing at all, and nipping out runners, has carried 

 them on to delightful success. 



Comparisons with their own feelings and requirements convey the needful 

 teaching best. They need food and drink — so do the plants. They must 

 breathe or they find that if breathing is stopped death comes — so must the 

 soil have air continually while feeding growing plants, and we scratch it over 

 continually then so that air can enter freely. The plants want to make run- 

 ners most — but we want the fruit. We stop the runner-making and so get 

 the plants to use their supplies to make fruit-buds. 



One of the little ones said to a peeping runner, "I'll nip your nose;" the 

 phrase caught, and then it became rare fun to catch these noses as they 

 begin to show and give them a pinch in time. The young growers have been 

 taught that by stopping these at once all the material that the plant would 

 use to make them is kept at home to be used to build the blossom-buds, but 

 that if the runner forms and takes root there is so much material lost for 

 fruit-forming. 



Upon another occasion the same writer said: Two industrious little bustlers 

 here of ten, who have themselves marked out, bought, and planted beds of 

 twenty-four plants each of Manchester and Cumberland strawberries, and who 

 visit them daily to look for the first appearance of weeds, runners, or crusted 

 surface, found me one day at an older bed, scissors in hand, clipping out not 

 only runner points but old leaves or fruit stems, where they were shading the 

 new ones. They asked why I cut the leaves off. " I want my plants to look as 

 green and healthy as yours," I said. But for better answer I took them to a 

 bed of shrubbery and flowers near by, and showed them how stems and flowers 

 were largest on the shoots which had the largest and thickest and greenest 

 leaves, and how there was no growth at all on such as had no leaves or 

 faded ones. 



They soon understood from what they saw the importance of healthy entire 

 leaves. Next we searched to find whether any leaves were perfect that were 

 shaded by the light from others. The children clapped their hands and poured 

 out exclamations of surprise and delight when they saw how cunningly every 

 every leaf stem was turned so as to have the face of the leaf in as full sunlight 

 as possible, and how good naturedly each seemed to be satisfied with just its 

 share, making all the room possible for others. None but the well-lighted ones 

 were healthy. We went back to the strawberry rows with these observations 

 fresh in mind, and my ardent litle visitors saw for themselves that wherever a 

 green leaf was shaded by older ones, or by dust, or by being bent away from 

 its light, its usefulness to the plant was lost. Their faces became reverent 

 with respect felt for these main agents of plant-growth. By way of adding 

 book-lore to the object lesson, I read a paragraph from the " Wonders of the 

 Leaf," and promised another when they called again. For the present they 

 had quite enough to meditate upon, and to guide their further plant-care by. 



Forest Trees from Seed. — Children can be taught to get a great deal 

 of enjoyment out of planting tree seeds and watching the growth of the 

 young forest trees which in so short a time under their care develop into fine 

 shade trees, and if of the nut-bearing species so much the better, for it will 

 not be long before they can eat the fruit from their own planting. 



