IQOS-] AGRICULTURE IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 225 



however, but what it is a subject of large usefulness to the 

 children in our public schools, and will be of great benefit to 

 them in after life if it is properly handled. 



Then, too, take the subject of the taming and domestication 

 of animals. That is something of vast importance — how to 

 treat an animal : how to look after it ; to know what kind of 

 teeth they have, and many other essential points which might 

 be enumerated if time permitted. The taming and domestica- 

 tion of animals should not be overlooked, because it is some- 

 thing which a child ought to learn in order to know how to live 

 with them. They have to live with these things in their lives, 

 and they ought to know how to do it in such a way as to make 

 the best of it. 



Furthermore, an understanding and acquaintance with a 

 great many of our insect eating animals that we have about the 

 farm is a matter of importance — toads and frogs and that 

 class of animals. I was thinking this morning in connection 

 with this subject, of a story that is told, in which two men in 

 Worcester went down town and bought some strawberry plants. 

 Each man got a dozen, took them to their homes and put them 

 out. A few days afterwards one of them came over to the 

 house of the other and asked how his strawberry plants were 

 getting along. He said, " They are all eaten up with the cut 

 worms. All gone." The other one said to him, " Why, how 

 did it happen? Mine are all right." "Haven't you lost any 

 of yours?" "Why, no." Then he wanted to know the rea- 

 son, and his friend said to him, " Go out there and look." So 

 he went out to the garden and there he found several huge fat 

 toads sitting around on the plants, and, of course, every time 

 a cut worm showed up it was promptly put out of the way. 

 The man who had lost his plants promptly took the hint. He 

 says, " I will just fix that." He went back home and replanted 

 his strawberry bed, and took pains to see that there were some 

 toads around the patch, and after that he had no trouble. In 

 that way he saved his strawberries. If we had toads enough 

 to put on the tobacco fields you would not be worrying about 

 keeping the cut worms away from the plants. It will take 

 some time to get them, but we and our children ought to know 

 these facts, about the force in nature that controls this, that, 

 and the other thing, or ought to know that there is a balance 

 somewhere, and when that balance has been destroyed it is 



Agr. — 15 



