20 THE SCHOOL GARDEN. 



of broadening the culture of the people in a manner 

 worthy of human destiny ? 



There is a key to the solution of this problem, and it 

 is found essentially in a just estimate of the value of in- 

 struction in natural science. Rossmussler expresses him- 

 self thus : " Mother Earth, with her materials, powers, 

 phenomena and forms of life is to us what we call na- 

 ture. This nature is our home, to be a stranger to 

 which brings disgrace and injury to us all. In this con- 

 ception, nature is the ground-work of human culture and 

 morals. In these words, in my view, lies the central 

 point of human instruction." 



The shortest, nearest path to this goal is the estab- 

 lishment of school gardens suited to time and place. In 

 the school garden may be comprised far more than half 

 of the instruction in natural history and science, and 

 specially an essential part of the science of the home re- 

 gion. Here and there good school gardens are found 

 in which this or that department of natural history has 

 been taught with more or less skill, and which have 

 served to diffuse many useful and good thoughts. But 

 school gardens which seek to flow in all directions into 

 a unified, well thought out, consecutively progressive 

 whole, with a plan and purpose (all that is good and 

 much that is excellent that is found scattered here and 

 there without reference to a greater sphere), were set in 

 motion by the two first editions of the " Volksschulgar- 

 ten" and by the Austrian model school in the Exposi- 

 tion of 1873. 



School gardens must certainly always take into view 

 first the manifold circumstances ; but they can only solve 

 the pending problems to the thinkers when they follow 

 out not merely single points of view, but starting from 



