RURAL EDUCATION 29 



from papers read by teachers at a recent " Nature 

 Study Exhibition " are very interesting : — 



•' The school garden is a piece of ground preserved 

 solely for school purposes. . . Except that it is kept 

 weeded during the holidays, the whole work of the 

 garden and orchard is done by the boys and girls, 

 from first to last, under the direction of a master on 

 the staff. The experimental portion is used for grow- 

 ing all the plants most necessary for life in different 

 conditions of soil, manure, and so on. In fact, it is 

 an outdoor laboratory, to be used in connection with 

 the class-room, in which further experiments are 

 carried out in plant physiology and the chemistry of 

 earth, air, and water, for the investigation of the 

 problems suggested by the garden work." (Mr. F. H. 

 Badley.) 



Again •. — 



" I am dissatisfied with mere book-education. I 

 want my children to see, to smell, to handle, to feel, 

 and to think about things for themselves. In books 

 we do all this, at best, second-hand, I want to make 

 their observation more acute and their records more 

 accurate. , . We are not taught to see things, and 

 we do not see them. We go through life without 

 seeing half the beauty, half the wonder that is daily 

 before our eyes." (Mr. H. Lorison.) 



It is difficult to understand how the Board of 

 Education — in spite of traditional leaning in favour 

 of literary education — can resist evidence, not only 

 from its own officers, but from many other quarters — 

 in favour of a reform in the present methods of 

 teaching. It is true that several subjects of a rural 

 kind are now added to the code as "optional" sub- 

 jects. This "permission" is useful as far as it goes, 



