Farmers' Week in Agricultural College. 77 



the motions with him, and they do this for several minutes. Then 

 they sit down and find that somehow the trouble they had with their 

 arithmetic has all cleared away. Up goes a hand, "Teacher, I have 

 the answer." That's nature study for you — fresh air. They had been 

 breathing carbon dioxide gas, and you cannot solve arithmetic problems 

 on that kind of atmosphere; you can not work out the lessons in geo- 

 graphy and grammar imless you have oxygen in the blood; and the 

 teacher can not teach properly unless he breathes fresh air. Short 

 lessons in agriculture and home economics can be given in the same 

 way. 



Take ten or fifteen minutes and devote to the study of com, or of 

 the potato, or any subject relating to the farm, and the pupils will 

 realize that when they go to school they do not go to a foreign country 

 to study about bananas or cocoanuts. They learn that there is some- 

 thing worth studying on the farm. Corn is a verv' interesting thing 

 to tell them about. This great M'ork of boys' com growing contests, 

 going on here, is one of the most valuable things that could be intro- 

 duced in the line of education, in the uplift of agriculture, in the up- 

 lift of the boy's heart and soul and mind and body, in the uplift of the 

 rural community, in the uplift of manhood and womanhood throughout 

 the United States. Let the good work go on, and let us have more 

 work of the kind, and let it extend to contests by the girls in bread- 

 making, etc. When we introduce these things into the public school 

 not only do the pupils learn something, but the teacher learns also ; I 

 think that one of the nicest things about this work is that the teacher 

 is making progress. I have gone into a little white school house in 

 South Dakota and have seen the teacher (who had fourteen pupils and 

 twenty-seven classes) trying to interest the children in arithmetic and 

 in grammar. She did not seem to get along very fast; but if she had 

 taken up some of the things on the farm that the boys know about, 

 and even showed her ignorance and let them tell her something, they 

 would have been interested and would have done better in their regular 

 studies. 



One way for the teacher to do something along the line of agri- 

 culture is to have in the school house an incubator and a bee-hive. If 

 one cannot get an incubator, get an old sitting hen and place her in the 

 cellar and get some nice eggs and place under her. The bee-hive is 

 good for several reasons, first along the line of nature study, and sec- 

 ond if there is any boy who is particularly troublesome, a good remedy 

 is to let a bee get after him. If you will place the incubator in that 

 school room, and will set white thin-shelled eggs, and after they have 

 been in the incubator for one or two days, darken the room and take 



