192 HANDBOOK OF NATURE STUDY 



Now, if we could only make a journey to the South, how 

 different the field, the meadows, the woods, and the orchards 

 would look there ! Instead of waving wheat fields, we should 

 see immense areas of corn, cotton, sugar cane, and rice. Of 

 our well-known forest trees very few are found there. In 

 the orchards grow the orange, the fig, the almond, and lus- 

 cious raisin grapes ; and rushes and grasses ten to forty feet 

 high form the well-known canebrakes of the swamps. Could 

 we extend our journey to the south of Florida, we should be 

 in the very tropics, where the pineapple, the date palm, 

 the stately banana plant, and the lofty cocoanut palm 

 greet us. 



Send to the Department of Agriculture for a list of Farmers' Bul- 

 letins, and ask the Superintendent of Documents, Union Building, 

 Washington, D. C., to send you regularly the monthly list of publica- 

 tions issued by the Department of Agriculture. These lists are sent 

 free, and they will tell you how to secure many valuable publications. 

 See Farmers' Bulletin : No. 35, Potato Culture ; No. 39, Onion Cult- 

 ure ; No. 52, The Sugar Beet; No. 20, Washed Soils. See the Zone 

 Map in the Yearbook of 1894. The Yearbooks of the Department of 

 Agriculture can generally be secured through the congressman of your 

 district. 



28. A Few Common Weeds. 



1. Wild Mustard. Brass ica Sinapistrum. 



2. Yellow Foxtail, Pigeon Grass. Setaria glauca. 



3. Wild Oat. Avena fatua. 



MATERIAL : Whole plants of each species in different stages of de- 

 velopment, each showing roots ; seeds and seedlings, if possible. Show 

 the plants a day or two before the lesson, and let each pupil provide 

 himself with material. The children should have observed the plants 

 for some time. If wild mustard and wild oats are not common in 

 your region, take other weeds more common and consult your state 

 reports about them. Touch briefly upon the weeds which were studied 

 before. 



See Bulletin No. 34, Weeds of the Mustard Family, Iowa Experi- 

 ment Station. 



