234 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



be taught. Others that it is especially important that civil 

 government and political economy should be taught. Even 

 in the district schools many of them are very sure that hy- 

 giene and physiology and anatomy, to a certain extent, should 

 be taught. Nearly every one now agrees that botany should 

 be taught. Others still claim that the elements of chemistry, 

 entomology, and physics, together with a great number of 

 other ologies, should also be taught by this teacher of the 

 village school or of the public school. Now we are to add 

 to all that agriculture and nature study. We are to teach the 

 pupils the best means of feeding calves, of punching borers 

 out of peach trees, and how to attend to the teeth of domestic 

 animals; how to estimate the size of strawberry boxes, and 

 how to fill them; in catching toads and placing them under 

 cabbage plants, and a great many other useful industries are 

 to be promoted in this manner. It is all to be added to the 

 work of the teacher, in addition to the usual routine work of 

 the school, which, of course, nobody thinks of laying aside. 

 It makes me think of the poor little girl who was crying over 

 her long example in multiplication. Her mother came along 

 and asked her what was the matter. " Oh, my," she says, 

 " I do wish that I was an Australian rabbit." " Well, why 

 do you want to be an Australian rabbit?" "Why, I read 

 in the geography this morning that they can multiply rap- 

 idly." Almost every teacher would begin to feel if this 

 greatly increased burden was placed upon them that he or 

 she had got to multiply into innumerable persons, or into a 

 person with innumerable heads upon them, in order to master 

 all these things. 



Now, I think they will try to do it if you ask them. I do 

 not agree with the gentleman who last spoke that our teachers 

 are a disgrace to our state. I think they are a great honor to 

 our state. The teachers that are teaching in Podunk Hollow, 

 in Stony Lonesome, and Rattleium, and everywhere else over 

 these hills, what they have to do they are trying to do well. 



