(38 



oral English. It is believed by some of the principals that our type 

 of work offers one of the finest of opportunities for rich work in 

 oral English. The Bellevue Hospital, Manhattan, requested us to 

 come monthly to one of their psychopathic wards for nature work 

 with the children. The Mineola Home for Cardiac Children asked 

 for assistance with their outdoor garden. The Curator went to 

 the Home, looked over the piece of land, and made plans for the 

 work; then two of the assistants in the department took charge of 

 the actual staking out of the garden and gave the first garden les- 

 sons. The department presented the seeds for the work and to- 

 mato plants raised by our own boys and girls. 



The Curator of Elementary Instruction and her assistants have 

 given 39 lectures this year, and the Curator alone has been obliged 

 to refuse about 40 lecture requests on account of pressure of other 

 Garden work. Just at this point it might be well to state the total 

 attendance figures for all classes and lectures given by this depart- 

 ment, which figure is 74,243, an increase of nearly 15,000 over the 

 total attendance for 1921. Our seed work has remained about 

 normal : we have reached 4,053 teachers and 76,528 children. In 

 all our activities, including regular classes, visiting classes, seed 

 work, conferences, loan lectures, and material distributed, we have 

 come in touch with approximately 10,917 teachers and with 240,789 

 children. 



Equipment 



This year we have added to our equipment three moving-picture 

 reels purchased from the Commercial Museum of West Philadel- 

 phia, and from the same source five drawers from a loan collection 

 cabinet which the State of Pennsylvania authorizes the Commercial 

 Museum to arrange for the schools of that State. The drawers 

 show such important commercial materials as corn, rice, cotton, 

 silk, and flax. These exhibits have been used in connection with 

 the geography work done in the grade schools of the Borough of 

 Brooklyn. 



A special room has been set aside as permanent quarters for the 

 seed work. Equipment for the room has been worked out from 

 our experiences of the last nine years. Shelves of the right height 

 for packing and filling, special bins to hold seeds and filled packets, 



