220 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [17:5— May, 1920 



supervisor, who with two half-time teachers, instructs about 400 

 pupils per week. It also affords our teachers ample opportunity 

 for securing practice and help along various lines of elementary 

 agriculture. This Center maintains a trial orchard, a goodly 

 variety of fruit and nut trees, nurseries, collection of ornamental 

 shrubbery, cold frames, hot beds, hot houses, lath houses, pigs, 

 chickens and rabbits. The Center furnishes seeds for elementary 

 schools and is actually producing a large part of the ornamental 

 trees, shrubs, vines, etc., now being used for ornamentation of 

 school grounds about the city. A large portion of this work is 

 performed by about 400 pupils incidental to instruction in plant 

 production. 



The agriculture department has the suj^ervision of planning, 

 planting and care of all trees, shrubs and vines on elementary 

 school grounds. Pupils perform as much of the work as its 

 nature justifies from the standpoint of educational value. The 

 more difficult physical labor is performed by a practical gardner 

 who is under the constant employ and control of our department. 

 His services make it possible for us to extend help to our teachers 

 as they need it, in doing the rougher work about gardens and 

 grounds. This has been a great encouragement to the work, and 

 as a result, more than 60 schools have lawns and over 100 have 

 been permanently improved with trees and shrubs. 



Agriculture offers the right kind of teacher wonderful oppor- 

 tunities, but one of our chief difficulties lies in the dearth of 

 properly trained teachers of the subject. The department, during 

 the eight years of its existence, has virtually been obliged to train 

 its own teachers, chiefly after they entered the service. We have 

 also trained a number of garden teachers as cadets at our Center, 

 and a summer course in gardening has been given for the past three 

 seasons. This situation is due to a number of things — the work 

 is hard with compensation the same as for regular grade work, 

 and the teaching of agriculture in elementary schools by special 

 teachers is not nearly as common as it should be. Then too, our 

 normal schools apparently excuse their neglect of this most 

 important subject on the ground that the limit demanded for 

 teachers of agriculture does not justify giving it the attention 

 they do domestic science, manual training or art. 



