TEXT-BOOK'S OF AGRICULTURE 



245 



tration of various arithmetical principles relate to agricultural 

 affairs. This is in accord with some of the recent tendencies 

 of mathematical teaching where attempts have been made to 

 reorganize the subject by omitting many of the traditional feat- 

 ures, and by presenting the essentials of the subject closely asso- 

 ciated with its application to things of every day life. 



A fourth type has to do with secondary schools. Good in- 

 struction in agriculture in high schools is probably the most 

 important phase of agricultural education yet to be developed. 

 This is important for several reasons, but chiefly because of the 

 reaction on the elementary schools. Teachers in the elementary 

 schools in rural communities are being recruited more and more 

 from rural high schools. In some states seventy per cent of the 

 present teaching force have no more than a grammar school 

 education. The per cent of teachers with this small preparation 

 for teaching is, taking our country at large, much higher than any 

 of us likes to contemplate. It is to the new teachers who are to 

 have at least a high school education that we must look to carry 

 agricultural education into the rural elementary schools. A good 

 text-book, with well selected experiments, although alone not 

 sufficient, is, nevertheless quite essentia.1 to any general introduc- 

 tion and efficient agricultural instruction in rural high schools. 

 Among the text -books reviewed will be found good examples of 

 each of the four types that have been described. Other reviews 

 will follow in later numbers of this magazine. The editor of this 

 department will be glad to give notices of the new books as they 

 appear. 



Review of Books on Agriculture. 



One Hundred Lessons in Elementary Agriculture. By A W. Nolan. 

 Morgantown. W. Va Acme Pub. Co., 1908. This very useful book 

 aims to give suggestive subject-matter and methods upon which the teach- 

 er may build from his own initiative The wide range of topics included 

 in the hundred lessons touches all important phases of agricultural prob- 

 lems. Soils, seeds, gardens, trees, crops, insects, weeds, poultry, foods, 

 birds, machinery, rural civics and economics — these suggested by titles of 

 prominent lessons will give some idea of the scope of the course of lessons. 

 Much of it is good nature-study with agricultural materials and some of it 

 is strictly the technical aspect of the science of agriculture. 

 Agriculture for Southern Schools. J. F. Duggar. Xew York : The Macmil- 



lan Co., 1908, pp 



