300 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



find, because I want to tell you that whenever you touch the school 

 system you touch a tender place. The curriculum of our public 

 schools has to be left intact, even where slight changes are desired 

 to be made. However, there is a place where we can put in this 

 subject. There is a subject called "nature study," and vou can 

 teach the children without interfering with the curriculum. We 

 went to the superintendent of schools in St. Paul, and he was very 

 much interested in it and asked us to bring the matter before the 

 board. I suppose we should have to go about it in the same way to 

 reach the teachers of the state. You would be astonished to find 

 the ignorance on this subject. \\ hen we began we were in that list, 

 and we have not gotten out of it yet. We went to Prof. Green to 

 secure counsel and assistance. We told Prof. Green there was a 

 club in St. Paul that believed this was the right thing to introduce 

 in the schools. We told him this club^ had no money, and we 

 thought we could get seed from the state agricultural college, and 

 a number of the members of the club thought we could plant the 

 seed, and in that way we could get a good many thousand trees that 

 we could distribute to the children in the schools. I smile now 

 when I think of it. Prof. Green said there was a quicker way and 

 asked us why we did not go to the school authorities and get them 

 to pay for the trees, and he said he thought he could furnish us the 

 trees so we would not have to wait three or four years for those 

 grown from the seed. So that offer was made to the children, the 

 money was collected, and we were perfectly astonished at the num- 

 ber of trees that were sold, it amounted to thousands. You re- 

 member the day those trees were distributed to the high schools, I 

 think there were some fourteen thousand, and on that following 

 Arbor Day there was such a digging of holes and such planting that 

 the earth seemed to be perforated with holes. The holes were dug 

 three feet in diameter and eighteen inches deep, and with the trees 

 we gave out a little pamphlet with illustrations and concise direc- 

 tions as to how those trees should be planted and cultivated and 

 cared for. how to protect from sun scald and from root-killing, be- 

 cause there was the densest ignorance, and many could not tell the 

 difference between an apple tree and any other — so we had to be- 

 gin at the very beginning. I think there is a better understanding 

 now. That was the way we began. 



The President : It is something to know that over in St. Paul 

 there were planted fourteen thousand apple trees this year. 



Mr. C. S. Harrison (Neb.) : I would like to say a word in re- 

 gard to this colossal ignorance. I had a college president come to 

 see me. a good man, a preacher, and I was showing him some of 

 my phlox with pods as big as peas, and he said, "Do you eat those 



