EDITORIAL 287 



"Crucifer" plot would be found cress, mustard, cabbage, turnip, 

 cauliflower, radish, kale, rape, broccoli, candytuft, etc. How 

 much alike the seeds are and even the early seedlings. "Solana- 

 ceal" contains tobacco, potato, tomato, egg plant, peppers, petunia, 

 salpiglossis, with a despised thorn-apple {datura) or nightshade 

 transplanted from their disreputable associates in some waste lot. 

 The "legumes" make another interesting collection. 



The experiments cited above are all possible in the poorest 

 equipped school. More elaborate ones may be performed where 

 time and equipment permits. Useful books in this line are Plant 

 Biology by Cavers; Experiments with Plants by Osterhout; 

 Agriculture through Laboratory and Garden by Jackson and 

 Dougherty. 



Editorial 



During the past summer at Chautauqua at an Educational 

 Council the question was debated, "Has Nature-Study in the 

 Schools Been a Failure?" The chief debaters were Professors Earl 

 Barnes and Vaughan MacCaughey. Professor Barnes spoke first 

 and said in substance: 



"There has never been any great enthusiasm in nature-study 

 since the world began until about forty years ago. Since 1870 there 

 has been intense interest in it, in connection with the scientific 

 movement. We are living in a scientific epoch. Considering this, 

 we ought to have a perfect efflorescence of nature work. We have 

 had well organized forces back of nature-study, take for example 

 Cornell University, the University of Chicago, and other great 

 institutions. Yet the amount of work done has been almost 

 negligible. Most of the nature work has come through vocational 

 training. In most of the schools there has been comparatively no 

 nature work because our teachers are women. You could not have 

 kept nature-study out of the schools by any other means. It took 

 a tremendous force to keep it out of the schools. That force has 

 been the women who guard the school room. Women are not 

 primarily interested in science. If they are interested in birds, it 

 is to have them in a cage to show the children; if they are inter- 

 ested in blossoms, it is for dining room decorations. Women do 

 not care for science, for the abstraction. They want something 



