ARBOR DAY ITS HISTORY AND OBSERVANCE. 51 



will furnish an object lesson for pleasant and profitable discourse for 

 many days and at all seasons. A few flowers, which teacher or pupil 

 may bring to the schoolroom, will easily be made the means of inter- 

 esting the oldest and the youngest and of imparting the most profit- 

 able instruction. How easy also to plant a few seeds in a vase in the 

 schoolroom window and to encourage the pupils to watch their sprout- 

 ing and subsequent growth. 



The pupils can also be readily interested in getting sections of trees 

 so cut as to show the structure of the wood, and with a portion of the 

 bark left upon them. It will require but a short time to accumulate 

 quite a collection of such specimens in the schoolroom, and they will 

 serve as a standard of reference with which to compare fresh speci. 

 mens and identify them. One face of the sections should be smoothed 

 and varnished, the others should 

 be left as when split from the tree. 

 The cut appended shows a good 

 form for such sections. 



Then it should not be difficult 

 to have a portion of the school 

 grounds set apart, where the 

 pupils might, with the teacher's 

 guidance, plant flower and tree 

 seeds and thus be able to observe 

 the ways and characteristics of 

 plants in all periods of their 

 growth. They could thus provide 

 themselves with trees for plant- 

 ing on future Arbor Days, and at 

 the time of planting there would 

 be increased enjoyment from the 

 fact that they had grown the 

 trees for that very purpose. 



Why might not every schoolhouse ground be made also an arbore- 

 tum, where the pupils might have under their eyes, continually, speci- 

 mens of all the trees that grow in the town or in the State where the 

 school is situated? It would require but a little incitement from the 

 teacher to make the pupils enthusiastic with the desire to find out the 

 different species indigenous to the region and to gather them by sowing 

 seeds or planting the young trees around their place of study. 



And if the school premises are now too small in extent to admit of 

 such a use, let the pupils make an earnest plea for additional ground. 

 As a general fact our school grounds have been shamefully limited in 

 extent, and neglected as to their use and keeping. The schoolhouse in 

 itself and in its surroundings ought to be one of the most beautiful and 

 attractive objects to be seen in any community. The approach from the 

 street should be like that to any dwelling house, over well-kept walks, 



