PREFACE. 



The preparation of this book is an effort to combine 

 in convenient form the discussions, directions for labo- 

 ratory and field exercises, note-book work, and farm 

 arithmetic, which the author has found most practical 

 and helpful in teaching elementary agriculture in rural 

 schools. 



It has been the aim of the author to select from the 

 vast field of agricultural knowledge and practice such 

 subject-matter, materials, and methods as the teacher 

 in the one-room country school, in the grammar grades 

 of a graded school, or in the beginning years of a high 

 school, may find easily practical, within the range . of 

 the pupil's understanding, and full of profitable inter- 

 est and educational value. It is a text-book and manual 

 combined for the purpose of leading away from the 

 usual text-book method of teaching to the method of 

 first-hand contact with the real things of agriculture. 

 The fields, the pastures, the groves, the orchards, and 

 the gardens, are the real text-books, this book is only 

 a "friendly guide-post." If the work is not conducted 

 by means of real things, the educational value is lost, 

 and the information given not permanently retained. 



Many of the lessons are followed by a set of practical 

 farm problems. These problems have a definite relation 



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