CHAPTER III. 



THE SCHOOL GARDEN BELONGS TO EVERY EDUCATIONAL 

 INSTITUTION, AND TO BE ADAPTED TO SPECIAL WANTS. 



Many friends of schools will perhaps consider it very 

 difficult, indeed quite impossible, to carry into effect the 

 ideas thus far developed for the realization of a beauti- 

 ful and theoretically incontestable ideal, and will look 

 upon it as a mere pious wish. And this for two rea- 

 sons. First, because they think the teachers are not to 

 be found who possess the exalted gifts of the teaching 

 required for it, and also because the communities would 

 not be likely to have the means, or the insight, or at 

 least the spirit of self-sacrifice to carry out and support 

 such school gardens. 



Neither of these things is to be feared. In regard 

 to the teachers, it is not asked of them that they shall 

 be learned men, or at least so exceedingly learned as to 

 be able to know and determine every plant, every ani- 

 mal, or every mineral at sight. There are no such 

 teachers, and they are not necessary. Indeed they 

 would not be desirable, since they would have no pleas- 

 ure in teaching any thing but natural history. But the 

 requisition that every teacher should know something 

 (52) 



