THE SCIENCE OF GARDENING. 29 



Sweden alone possesses two thousand public school- 

 gardens, and there, as in Austria, the system has become 

 so popular that all new school buildings have one room 

 set apart as a school-garden room, where are assembled 

 herbariums, works on agriculture, geology, agricultural 

 chemistry and physiology, and apparatus used by the 

 teachers in their lectures upon plant-life. The public 

 school law passed in Austria in 1869, provided that ^'In 

 every school a gymnastic ground, a garden for the 

 teacher, according to the circumstances of the commun- 

 ity, and a place for the purposes of agricultural experi- 

 ment be created." The school inspectors of each dis- 

 trict are instructed **To see to it that in the country 

 schools school-gardens shall be provided for agricultural 

 instruction in all that relates to the soil, and that the 

 teacher shall make himself skillful in such instruction." 

 The general law declares, ^^Instruction in natural his- 

 tory is indispensable to suitably established school-gar- 

 dens. The teachers must, therefore, be in a condition 

 to conduct them." Contrast this thoughtful care with 

 the system, or rather, w\ant of system, for the finer 

 instruction of the mind pursued in the public schools of 

 our rural districts ! The time will come when, in this 

 country, as in Europe, more practiced attention must be 

 paid to the practical instruction of the masses in our 

 country districts than now ; our boasted public school 

 system, though not retrograding in our cities, has, in 

 the country districts, been far outstripped by that of 

 Germany, Sweden and Scotland, where technical educa- 

 tion is now given, fitting the pupils, as men and women, 

 to deal with the affairs of agricultural life. 



