294 THE NEW AGRICULTURE. 



regular graded school of the best type is conducted. Public 

 conveyances, as many of them as are needed, make regular 

 trips, bringing the children to school in the morning and 

 returning them safely to their parents' care at the close of 

 school hours in the afternoon. The wagons are covered, and 

 during the winter season in the Northern States, comfort- 

 ably warmed. The new practice is popular with the children 

 and with every intelligent tax-payer. That gap between the 

 home and the school that solicitous parents have always recog- 

 nized as exposing their children to both physical and moral 

 ills is closed by the new order of things. There is better 

 teaching, better attendance, less tardiness almost none, in 

 fact greater pride in the school and less solicitude on the 

 part of the parents than by any other system that has ever 

 been devised. Add to this that high school courses are being 

 provided in these consolidated schools, and that the elements 

 of agriculture are to be taught practically throughout the 

 entire grade just as the trades are now taught in the city 

 schools, and there is presented to the farmer one of the most 

 pleasing prospects that has ever dawned upon his view. 



With the extraordinary activity in the exploitation of elec- 

 tricity during recent years it would have been strange indeed 

 if its influence upon the growth and fructifying of plants had 

 failed to receive attention. A considerable number of experi- 

 ments have been performed with a view to settling the ques- 

 tions involved, but the whole subject is as yet only at the be- 

 ginning of its discussion. Atmospheric electricity is, of course, 

 admitted, but as to vertical currents this is, as yet, pure 

 theory. It is supposed by some that the vapors of water 

 serve as the transmitters of atmospheric electricity, carrying 

 it into the upper regions of the air, where it meets a stratum 



