THE EMBELLISHMENT OF SCHOOL GROUNDS. 91 



School grounds should be separated into two distinct portions — 

 one for an out-door g^-mnasiura, and devoted entirely to that end ; 

 the other should be devoted to turf, trees, shrubs, flowers, and 

 walks. Pupils should be taught that everything which adds to the 

 beauty of this place must be carefully preserved. Every plant 

 should be labelled and catalogued, and most carefully nurtured. 

 The play grounds should have seats against the fences, a shelter 

 shed for protection from rain and heat, and a supply of pure 

 water. All out-buildings should be screened by lattice work or 

 better by climbing vines like the woodbine, Virginia creeper, etc. 

 Pupils should be early led to take an interest in the cultivated 

 part of the grounds. They will soon love the plants and learn 

 how to care for them. When this occurs, thefts and destruction 

 -of flowers, so common in many places, will almost entirely disap- 

 pear and most happy results will come, in the evident elevation 

 and refinement of the moral sentiments of our children. 



Except in the State of Connecticut, almost nothing has been 

 done to adorn the country school grounds of New England. 

 Many of these, with an expense of five dollars per year, would 

 in ten years be rendered exceedingly beautiful, and would make 

 a net return of at least an hundred fold in the improvement of the 

 premises and in the intellectual and moral development of the 

 community. But the most important advantage of these improve- 

 ments is the use to which they can be put in practical instruction. 

 A great fault in our system of education is that it is almost 

 exclusively literary. Habits of accurate observation and a knowl- 

 edge of the phenomena and facts of nature are almost unknown. 



We have no end of books, many good of their kind, but the 

 book which should be our primer and throughout life our constant 

 companion, is as little read as many family Bibles. Though 

 interesting, comprehensible, adapted to every age and grade of 

 mind, indispensable to our best enjoyment of life, unsectarian, 

 superbly bound and illustrated, and free to all, the Book of 

 Nature is almost never read. The great natural division of vege- 

 table life, the connecting link between animal and mineral 

 existence, is almost never even noticed. The great majority of 

 our people, with all their opportunities for knowledge, know 

 almost nothing of vegetable life, the mode and manner of vege- 

 table growth, its important relations to our comfort, health, and 

 even life, and its influence upon our moral and spiritual natures. 



