TEACHING HORTICULTURE IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 217 



scholars about this horticultural society, and you will be sur- 

 prised at the effect it will have in exciting an interest in horti- 

 culture among those children, and keep that practice up every 

 year, and the children will eagerly look forward to that time 

 when they hear what was done here. 



Prof. Pendergast: And have the scholors write down what 

 they retain. One of Mr. Dickens' characters in Nicholas 

 Nickleby solved this question a great many years ago. The 

 schoolmaster, Squeers, taught botany and horticulture in 

 something like this way. He wanted to teach it theoretically 

 and practically, and he would say to a boy, ''Spell turmit." 

 "T-u-r-m-i-t." "That's' right. Now you take the hoe and, for a 

 practical illustration, you go out into my garden and hoe tur- 

 mits for half an hour." By and by he would say to a boy, 

 "Spell pertati." '-P-e-r-t-a-t-i." "Right. Now you take a 

 bushel basket and dig it full of pertatis and bring them in and 

 take them over to my house, and that will be a practical illus- 

 tration, and you will have learned a good lesson in agricul- 

 ture." To another boy he would say, "Spell appultree." 

 A-p-p u-1-t-r-e-e." "That's all right. As soon as you get my 

 handkerchief tied over your mouth you take that basket and 

 go out and fill it full of appuls from my tree and put them in 

 the cellar." And in that way the man was teaching horticul- 

 ture and agriculture theoretically and practically. I would 

 not say how much progress the boy has made. (Laughter.") 



Prcf. W. M. Hays: I simply want to say in accord with this 

 suggestion, that experiments have been tried in connection with 

 getting pupils to take an interest in practical things. I have 

 known where such reading lessons have been used, even in 

 city schools, and T have tried to get teachers to try the experi- 

 ment. I have lots of faith in it. It is in the line of reading, 

 and there is no reason why horticulture and agriculture should 

 not have a place in school literature. I have come to the con- 

 clusion that we can get horticulture and agriculture in the 

 city school; a little of it, we do not want too much of it. As 

 to the reading, another thought has come to me and has been 

 impressed upon my mind more and more, that we can do a 

 great deal of mind training through the reading of these sub- 

 jects. I remenaber in the recent convention of agricultural 

 colleges some gentleman made the statement very prominent 

 that we needed to train the mind, to get a general training, and 

 let the technical training come afterwards. I asked this ques- 

 tion: If we take two young men over in West Virginia and put 



