122 First Conference 



of our great cities one still sees improvident school 

 boards building vast and spacious schools, sometimes 

 even beautiful ones, yet with only a paltry little railed 

 and concreted *' play-ground " (call it rather prison- 

 yard, shoving-yard, Hooliganeiim) bereft of life and 

 beauty. I call such suburban boards improvident, 

 and that doubly so: first, because the small tem- 

 porary money- saving to the rate-payer affected by 

 inadequate open space is very dearly bought by 

 the loss to the children in health and happiness, in 

 intelligence and morals ; and second, because at the 

 present rate of progress of educational requirements 

 this extra land will yet have to be acquired, and 

 necessarily at far greater expense. Yet even in the 

 most limited, the best paved or asphalted, the most 

 utterly sunless of play-grounds, there are ways and 

 means of introducing flower-corners and flower-borders 

 — as photographs at this exhibition clearly prove — 

 while the usual fears of their destruction by play, or 

 of interference with it, are both disproved wherever 

 the experiment is made. Of the moral as well as 

 intellectual and aesthetic advantage also, much might 

 be said. 



Grant us, then, this small fulcrum for our Nature- 

 study efforts. Regular open-air excursions may 

 now be taken for granted, with elementary nature 

 note-books, also advancing towards regional survey; 

 museum visits, school and individual collections also. 

 Aquarium, vivarium, bee-hive, and formicary are all 

 obviously practicable, as this exhibition also shows. 

 But similarly it proves the possibility and the useful- 

 ness of the school-garden. On these elemental bases 

 of nature-experience, and utilizing also the help of 



