84 THE NATURE STUDY COURSE. 



had an old table upon which the thirteen pots and some boxes were set. 

 This we could move from place to place or even carry outdoors. 

 Several seeds of eacli kind germinated in every pot ; they were finally 

 thinned out to one of each kind, most of the removed ones being taken 

 away to plant somewhere else. Each child watered and looked after 

 his own pair of plants, and kept a record of the chief events in their 

 development. There was a race to have the first to blossom. Some of 

 them would like to have taken their plants home on Friday night, but 

 I thought it better not to start that. Of course they were all taken 

 away for the summer holidays. The whole school observed the 

 differences in the leaves and the method of growth of the two kinds of 

 plants. Several of the other pupils planted balsam and nasturtium at 

 home, so after holidays we had an unlimited supply of flowers and 

 stems for comparisons. Both kinds have spurred flowers and watery 

 stems. The spur is above in one and below in the other, indeed the 

 differences in petals, sepals, stamens, stigmas and ovaries made ideal 

 lessons for the Fourth Class. Some of them watched the way insects 

 entered and came out of the flowers, and proposed good reasons for the 

 markings and shapes of the parts." 



An empty fruit-can with the top neatly cut and a hole 

 broken into the bottom for drainage serves the purposes of 

 window gardening in a school-room better than a small flower 

 pot. The latter, unless varnished, is so porous as to permit 

 excessive drying from Friday until Monday. It is a good 

 plan to set school-room plants on a movable table. They do 

 better on a shelf placed four or five inches below the window 

 sill than on the window sill itself because the pots are not so 

 directly exposed to drying influences ; then, too, they interfere 

 less with the light and with the movements of the window- 

 sash and blinds. 



Continue observation of common native plants at flowering 

 time and of flowering shrubs and trees. It is worth while to 

 learn the names of these if for nothing else than that in future 

 references the name will call up a more or less distinct image 

 of the plant. The attention of pupils in this grade may very 

 well be drawn to so much of the ecology of plants which they 



