1905.] DISCUSSION. 243 



don't think that any positive action by this body would do any 

 good. I have had a little experience in these matters. Fifteen 

 years ago I introduced a resolution instructing the secretary 

 of the board of that year to request the State Board of Educa- 

 tion to introduce an amendment into the education laws to the 

 effect that botany should be taught in our public schools. 

 There were three or four that spoke in favor of it, and it passed 

 unanimously, but that was the last that was ever heard of it. 

 The trouble is not that botany is not a good thing to teach, but 

 it is in getting teachers who understand botany. We must 

 have teachers who not only understand botany, but in order to 

 make others get the full benefit of the study the teachers have 

 got to love nature too, and must be able to adapt their teach- 

 ings to the child's mind. 



Over in our town last summer there was a competition 

 among five schools as to how many wild flowers should be 

 brought to each teacher. There was a prize for the school that 

 got the most, and the number ran up somewhere from eighty 

 to a hundred, I think. They had to know the names, and as 

 many as possible the botanical names. I was much handi- 

 capped in that respect, for I did not know anything about it. 

 After I got married I found that I had married a nature-lover, 

 one who loved plants and the trees, and whenever we went out 

 they attracted her attention. I knew comparatively little about 

 such things, and I had to ask her what this and that was ; even 

 as to the grasses that grew in my meadow. I did not know the 

 names of them, nor their quality, nor whether they were an- 

 nuals, biennials, or perennials. Well, I was proud. I did not 

 like to ask my wife every time. I wanted to know the thing 

 myself. I felt my smallness. It led me to introduce that reso- 

 lution years ago. I did not want others to be in the same situa- 

 tion that I had been in. I wished that I had been instructed, 

 when I went to school, in those things. You must instruct the 

 children, if you are ever going to, when they are young, and 

 particularly as to the botanical part of it. I felt when Mr. 



