Some Typical High Schools Teaching Agriculture 59 



have had plats at home in which they grow the usual garden 

 vegetables, while the country children mostly put their plats 

 into seed corn. The village children use their own taste largely 

 and put in early garden truck and potatoes. Much of the work 

 is experimental, testing different methods. Thus with potatoes, 

 certain students divided their plats into four parts. In one 

 part were planted quarters of the potato using the seed end, 

 in another part quarters from the stem end, in both cases from 

 potatoes that had been exposed to the sun for about four days ; 

 while in the third and fourth parts were planted the quarters 

 from potatoes just taken out of the dark cellar bin. The results 

 were carefully written up showing the yield of large and medium 

 potatoes, and the unmarketable part of the crop. One girl 

 tried the experiment of raising two crops of potatoes, using 

 an early variety. She succeeded in getting tubers from the 

 second crop weighing from four to six ounces. 



The boys from the farms have directed most of their efforts 

 toward breeding corn, bringing in notes of their work in the 

 fall the same as the village children. Their corn has been judged 

 by a representative from the Iowa State Agricultural College, 

 at Ames. An experiment in selecting and breeding was started 

 in 1904 by two brothers who were then seniors, which has since 

 been continued after they went to college by a younger brother 

 in the high school. As a result of the experiment, they have 

 produced a perfectly tipped ear, even to the one central tip 

 kernel. They concluded, however, that it did not pay, as the 

 process has " pinched the ears shorter." They had kept the ears 

 of previous years for comparison. These two brothers had 

 become so interested in scientific agriculture that they decided 

 to go to the college at Ames and fit themselves to become farm 

 superintendents. Other influences diverted them to a denomina- 

 tional school, where they have just graduated. Most of the 

 graduates from the high school go to sectarian colleges and 

 very few to the agricultural college. The superintendent believes 

 that five of the last senior class of twenty would not have entered 

 high school from the rural schools but for the favorable im- 

 pression made upon their fathers by the work in agriculture. 



