HORTICULTURAL EDUCATION IN OUR COMMON SCHOOLS. 357 
vating, trimming, grafting, naming, etc., etc., the students to be marked 
as in other class-work. The teachers may not be capable instructors in all 
these lines, but without doubt within each township may be found a man 
or woman perfectly competent to give instruction in any line with which 
the teacher proper may be unfamiliar, who would be glad to render the 
service upon the day of said recitation, such as setting of trees, trimming, 
grafting, potting of plants, examining buds, insects, worms, etc. As often 
as possible have lectures, professional or otherwise, on some division of 
Nature Study; and in summer take the individual classes or the whole 
school into the forest for a pleasant stroll to name the trees, the plants, etc., 
having them tell their natural characteristics and differences, and again into 
the orchards, both when in blossom and in fruitage. 
To illustrate the benefits of this line of teaching and practice, permit me 
to quote from a report of the last annual meeting of the Ohio State Horti- 
cultural Society, pertaining to a lecture given by Mr. F. H. Shuey, of Day- 
ton. “Mr. Shuey gave a lecture on home beautifying, illustrated by stereop- 
ticon views. The firm with which Mr. Shuey is connected has some 2,000 
employes, and pays large sums in wages to citizens of Dayton. One of 
the innovations introduced in its dealings with its employes is the setting 
aside of a plat of ground whereon the children may make gardens and com- 
pete for prizes. Last year thirty-three boys competed, each having a plat 
10x130 feet. Some of these boys grew more than enough vegetables to 
supply their families.’ The report proceeds to show why this gardening 
on the part of the boys was directed by the company. It was to keep them 
busy and out of mischief, because the vicinity of the employes homes had 
become of ill-repute. The next step was to clean up about the premises 
and to enter into a regular system of landscape gardening, resulting in a 
short time in this vicinity being the most beautiful part of the whole city, 
the children becoming orderly and interested in the beautifying of their 
premises, even to the back-yards and alley-ways. Again I quote: ‘Small 
children became so expert and interested in the work, that they would criti- 
cize various attempts at ornamental planting with a good deal of judgment 
and acumen. In looking at the work as shown on the screen, one could 
not but note that some of the finest effects were with very cheap and easily 
obtained materials. Morning glories, honey-suckles, climbing nasturtiums 
and moon-vines were most used for porches and fence screens, while the 
beds and groups were of easily grown annuals and bedding plants. For 
heavy planting, the castor bean, canna and caladium were used, being often 
massed with a very tropical effect. The fences were universally covered 
with vines, often poultry netting forming the fence for the vines to climb 
upon. The same material was used around verandas.” 
How much better for child, parent and community, both for the pres- 
ent and for the future, for the scholars to become interested in such scientific 
study and practical work than even to spend the time largely in studying 
Latin, continually drumming upon the piano, doing fancy work, reading 
trashy, blood-curdling novels, gossiping about their neighbors, playing 
tricks of various degrees of meanness in the community, not to mention the 
worse than wasted time in dancing, playing cards and rehearsing vile, foul 
stories. All thinking, unselfish people are today, as never before, seriously 
pondering over the best and most practicable methods of eradicating or 
effectually controlling the great and destroying evils abroad in the land, 
