FOREWORD TO THE TEACHER 



IT should be specially understood and remembered by 

 teachers that agriculture cannot be effectively taught if 

 the pupils merely memorize the lessons and recite them. 

 While the text should be placed in the hands of the 

 pupils and its reading encouraged, it is vastly more 

 important that their interest in the subject should 

 be excited by demonstration and experiment before 

 their eyes, and, so far as possible, that the experiments 

 should be made by the pupils themselves whether in the 

 schoolroom or in the garden. Short excursions to points 

 in the neighborhood where agricultural operations are 

 actually going on, or where the crops and implements 

 used in their cultivation can be seen and handled, 

 will be vastly more effective in exciting the children's 

 interest and causing them to read in the book what 

 they cannot actually see, than any amount of oral 

 teaching. The pictures in the book, while designed to 

 catch the pupils' eyes and attention, cannot replace 

 the impression and full understanding conveyed by the 

 objects themselves. 



The first object of this book is to interest the pupils 

 in the study of agriculture, and this should also be 



