io6 THE NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [i, 3, may 1905 



main purpose is educational and we want the little visitors to carry 

 away something besides the impression of beauty. Hence all the 

 specimens are distinctly labelled with the common names (we now 

 use permanent tin labels with black lettering). The wild flowers 

 and the cultivated plants are arranged on separate tables, and 

 when our specimens warrant it, the former are grouped as the 

 *' flowers of the field," " flowers of the woods " and " flowers of 

 the swamps," the first mentioned having when possible a back- 

 ground of common grasses. The flowers producing edible fruits 

 have a table by themselves with specimens showing the young 

 fruit forming. Another table is given up to the lower plants. 

 Here are lichens, fern clumps springing out of velvety moss that 

 the children delight to feel, and there are often horse-tails, club- 

 mosses and colonies of puff-balls that the children never tire of 

 '' making smoke." Several times we have had a miniature 

 swamp or bog with pitcher-plant, cranberry vines and sphagnum- 

 moss surrounding a tiny pool (in a tin basin), in which a small 

 turtle and some tadpoles disported themselves. In the fall we 

 have an array of nuts in their shells and other fruits arranged 

 according to their method of dispersal. 



It takes at least half a day to arrange the exhibits, and it has 

 not been found possible to keep the flowers more than three days or 

 four unless much fresh material is sent in. The principal of the 

 school divides the available time among his classes. It has been 

 found that the children gain much more when they see the flowers 

 two or three times and have an opportunity to talk them over with 

 each other and with their teachers. At the first visit they are too 

 much overwhelmed to take in details. 



That there was great need of just this kind of work the fol- 

 lowing statistics, based on data carefully collected by the teachers 

 and principals, certainly goes to prove. It was found that in one 

 school, with an attendance of 1,353, 76 per cent of the children 

 had never been to the country; and in another, with an attend- 

 ance of over a thousand, the percentage was 36, while half the 

 pupils had never seen even Central Park. In another school, 30 

 per cent of the 932 children in attendance had never been out of 

 the city ; in a second the percentage was 67 ; while in still another 

 it was 40. In two instances we were told by the principal that 

 she fully believed there were children in her school who had 

 never seen grass growing. 



