a Type Botanic Garden. G."> 



now lie waste or form the shut-up gardens of dismal squares. 

 Already a Board school is not to be reported on as 6rst-rate 

 without a museum, and the present experiment shows how 

 easy and reasonable it would be also to recommend the pos- 

 session of a garden. The expense of laying out such a garden 

 is only a few pounds. 



When taught, as has too often been the case, as a mere 

 matter of nomenclature, and from books and lectures alone, 

 botany probably even exceeds both the most conventional 

 gerund-grinding or the most confused muddle of so-called 

 modern subjects as an agency for the stupefaction of youth ; 

 and the disfavour into which the subject has fallen among 

 educationists is therefore little to be wondered at. Reasonably 

 taught, however, by the aid of fresh specimens, it offers a per- 

 haps unique combination of educational advantages. Xot 

 only may an intelligent interest in nature be aroused, and the 

 powers of observation be awakened and disciplined, but the 

 reasoning faculties as well ; not only too do drawing, painting, 

 and designing become delightful by its aid, but a thorough 

 manipulative dexterity, invaluable in after-life to men and 

 women alike, is thus rapidly and easily acquired ; not only 

 too do the other sciences, especially chemistry and physiology, 

 become more interesting and more intelligible, but the study 

 of language and literature to which schools are mainly at 

 present devoted be really helped and not hindered, for surely 

 neither Wordsworth nor Virgil would ever lose a reader who 

 had learned to know asphodels and celandine, and watch the 

 bees come and go in the school botanic garden. From careful 

 experiments, in which the same lesson was given day by day 

 to university students and school children alike, the writer is 

 in a position clearly to assert that it is by the latter that the 

 subject is studied with most ease, most enjoyment, and best 

 average educational result. 



To the admirable and energetic natural history societies, 

 which are among the healthiest agencies of progress in modern 

 towns, the project is particularly to be recommended. The 

 writer may perhaps mention that the enterprising Perthshire 

 Society of Natural Science has already had the subject under 

 consideration. 



The writer has to record his thanks to Mr and Mrs Nutt, 

 in whose garden at Grange House the experiment was made ; 



