THE STUDY or ironTirT-LTiRE IX rrnLic schools. 129 



summer traveller and the summer boarder come to disturb the 

 dreams of the country maiden, and to emphasize the contrast 

 between the actual and the ideal. With awakened intelligence and 

 quickened taste the mind reaches out for appropriate stimulus as the 

 flower turns toward the sun. And this actual life, so full of toil, 

 so bare of charm — the home with no adornment within or 

 without — you know it, for in j-our travels you must have seen it. 

 In a daj^'s ride across country so rarely can one see around the 

 country house any hint of garden in the true sense of the term, 

 that when once seen the sight will sigualize that day's journey. 



The summer homes of those who with more ample means seek 

 gratification of the innate love for the real delights of country life, 

 are marvels of beauty ; but these being the creation of wealth and 

 taste are quite bej'ond the reach of those who live on in the same 

 old way, for lack of the training which is so easily attainable and 

 so strangely withheld. 



For another reason are the farms abandoned : their cultivation 

 has become unprofitable. Under proper cultivation we know that 

 fields are fertile after centuries of culture ; many of our farms 

 liave had their wealth exhausted in three generations. The 

 colleges of agriculture and the mechanic arts, with their four 

 years' courses of scientific study, do not meet this necessity. 

 The people are not given in the common schools even the stones 

 of scientific culture. A large proportron of the farmers in this 

 country have not learned that fertilizers can be taken up by crops 

 only when in solution. They allow the rain to leach away all the 

 virtue of the stock of manure, and put the sticks and straw upon 

 their lands. In the country school not even the simplest laws of 

 plant growth are taught. When in the academy or high school 

 some most elementary knowledge of botany is offered to the few 

 who reach these schools, the study usually covers only a part of the 

 field. In our schools it is geuerallj'^ the case that botany is taught 

 only in the spring ; fruits are not studied at all, and the best 

 methods of preserving them are unknown. Some seeds are 

 sprouted in the school-room to illustrate the process of germina- 

 tion. The school grounds are never desecrated by the growing of 

 plants ; the kind and preparation of the soil, the selection and 

 action of fertilizers, climatic conditions and their influences, the 

 selection and use of tools, and the actual manipulations of the art, 



