674 MISCELLANEOUS FARM SUBJECTS 



Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers. John Burroughs. Hough- 

 ton, Mifflin & Co $1 00 



Wild Neighbors. Ernest IngersolL Macmillan Co 1 50 



Bird Neighbors. Neltje Blanchan. Doubleday, Page & Co. . 2 00 

 First and Second Books of Birds. Olive Thome Miller. 



Houghton, Mifflin & Co 1 60 



Field Book of American Wild Flowers. Schuyler Mathews. 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 1 75 



Our Native Trees. Harriet Keeler. Scribner's 2 00 



Do not confine the reading to matter of fact. Good stories are 

 always desirable. They cultivate imagination and develop the hu- 

 man interest. Encourage the children to read poems, and to read 

 them aloud. Such poems of childhood as those of Stevenson, Riley, 

 and Field are excellent. If the child once learns to collect and love 

 good books, there is little danger of his turning out bad. 



Interest the Child in Your Own Occupation. One of the per- 

 plexing problems of farm life is how to keep young people on the 

 farm. Work needs their attention and consumes tneir young life 

 and ambition. Too often the larger community holds out to them a 

 more alluring prospect and what to them seem like larger opportuni- 

 ties. It is not always best that a young man or woman should re- 

 main on the farm. It may not be according to his taste and ability. 

 But it surely is not always the fact that the bright members of the 

 family are the ones to go abroad into the professions and trades, while 

 those who seem less promising necessarily put the hand to the plow 

 and wear out the days in mere toil. Very many of our best men and 

 women are now on the farms. 



Farm life is calling for great intelligence and careful judgment. 

 Its problems are based upon science. The young people who engage 

 in it arc much the better prepared for a life's work if they have the 

 training and knowledge now afforded along agricultural lines. 

 With the scarcity of help it too often happens that the young people 

 can not get away from home to secure the training which is for their 

 good and which would lend a very different aspect to farming as a 

 business. 



Throughout the country, efforts are being made to afford scien- 

 tific training for those who are to have charge of the farms. The 

 money invested by the State for the education of the young men and 

 women who are to occupy these farms will add greatly to the wealth 

 and prosperity of the commonwealth. The promotion of agricul- 

 tural schools is one of the best means of helping the community at 

 large. The hard work and detailed arrangements of fanning need 

 perforce to be accompanied by thoughtful care in saving labor and 

 money. 



Many boys and girls are turned away from the farm because 

 they hear father and mother say so often that farming is a poor busi- 

 ness. The child is made to feel that storekeeping or doctoring, or 

 other occupation, is much better than farming. The farmer's own 

 fireside often sends his children away from the farm. If the farmer 

 does not take pride in his calling, his children will not. 



