TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 



The " School Gardens," by Dr. Schwab, is a little 

 book that seems to come most opportunely to this coun- 

 try, just as the minds of educators are at work upon 

 the problem of industrial education for the young. In- 

 dustrial education for the adult is quite another matter, 

 and yet its foundations should be laid earlier. Work- 

 shops of all sorts are gradually being established, in 

 which various branches of industry may be learned 

 after children leave the grammar school and high 

 school ; but the aim of the school garden is to make 

 the young love industrial work for what we love we do 

 and there is no introduction to such occupations so 

 charming as the culture of flowers. Thousands of 

 school gardens are in operation in Austria to-day, to 

 say nothing of other places, as the fruit of Dr. Schwab's 

 fertile and comprehensive brain. In preparing this work 

 for the American public, certain adaptations will have 

 to be made to our different institutions of society, and 

 our different plants and birds ; for it is designed for a 

 manual as well as for an exhaustive essay upon the sub- 

 ject, in which light it is of world-wide application. Dr. 

 Schwab's own animated words are best for the general 

 consideration of the subject, and the reader will easily 

 see where they do not apply in practice. 



MRS. HORACE MANN. 

 (3) 



