196 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



destruction by taking them to the badly eaten cabbage heads. Shall we 

 grow cabbages or shall we grow cabbage worms? If both are present one 

 must die, and the decision rests with us. AVe do grow some cabbages 

 e^•ery year and allow them to be destroyed by the wonns, so that the 

 children will know the reason for destroying the white butterfly. We 

 should not teach children that it is wrong to take life, for the basis of the 

 world is that one life furnishes the means of life to another by dj-ing in the 

 act. And if we are to live successfully we must destroy other life which 

 would injure us. The best instruction would teach the child to distinguish 

 its friends from its enemies. We class our insects under three heads: good; 

 bad; unknown. The good we protect. The bad we destroy. And every- 

 thing else we let alone because we do not know whether it is worth more 

 ali-\-e or dead. Mosquitoes, flies; the farther we go into the possibilities of 

 the garden the closer the real home life is bound to it, and the mere 

 horticultural side sinks farther and farther into insignificance. 



The teacher and children are together studying the elementary laws 

 of life, and learning rules of life that will be applicable anywhere. Not 

 in the garden only, but in the home, the school, and on the street. 



I took the class from the N. Y. University Summer School, who were 

 studying to teach in children's gardens, to visit our garden last summer 

 and the children cooked and served us with a meal made up of the products 

 of the garden. We have learned that nearly everything that we grow- 

 in the garden is edible in some country. But all the information that is 

 gained appeals more to the teacher than to the child. The child wants 

 to go to the garden because it is the most interesting play they know. 

 Here they can use their hands and their imagination. Here for a time 

 they possess the earth and here the small farmer has a chance to be the 

 ideal toward which we are striving for him, the normal child. 



School Garden Reports. 



Report of the South End Industrial School Garden, 

 RoxBURY, Mass. 



BY S. MYRTA ABBOTT, TEACHER. 



First Prize, Class A, 1906. 



The garden class, in connection with the South End Industrial School 

 and made up of pupils from that school, was first organized in the spring 

 of 1902. The garden that year was in Medford, where use was given of a 

 piece of land free from expense, and the garden children journeyed from 

 Roxbury to Medford once each week to tend their plots. In the summer 



