PREFACE 



THIS little book has been written with the hope of 

 supplying the need for an elementary text-book on agri- 

 culture that shall differ from others in having a definite 

 and limited field, the South. While many of the prin- 

 ciples of agriculture are universal, the application of these 

 principles is somewhat local. By limiting the field of a 

 text-book on agriculture to the Southern states, it becomes 

 possible to treat the subject in a concrete way ; to avoid 

 many generalities inseparable from a book intended for 

 use in all latitudes; and to employ as object-lessons only 

 those plants that any teacher or pupil in a Southern school 

 can easily obtain. For example, it is better that a South- 

 ern pupil study the peach bloom fresh from the tree than 

 to read of the flower of some plant rarely found in the 

 orchards or fields in this latitude. The cotton bloom, too, 

 affords a suitable example of how flowers are constructed. 

 This Southern point of view also makes it possible to give 

 fuller, and hence more teachable, treatment to the most 

 widely grown crops of the South. 



The principal aims that have guided the author in writ- 

 ing this book are these : 



I. To arouse .the interest of the pupil in nature, and 

 especially in the common plants of the Southern farm, 

 orchard, and garden. 



