236 Fourth Conference 



cultivates a love of industry, order, and tidiness; it 

 builds up a feeling for beauty of form and colour in 

 flowers and trees and fruits, and touches the heart of 

 man as well as his brain. It is a natural gymnastic, 

 and bridges over the space that separates physical 

 and intellectual growth. It also supplies a link be- 

 tween learning and life, and although it trains neither 

 the agriculturalist nor the horticulturalist in any im- 

 mediate way, it predisposes youths to interest them- 

 selves in these industries; and if it be their lot in 

 after-life to earn their bread in pursuit of them, it 

 does nothing to give a distaste for such occupations, 

 and yet it by no means unfits young people for 

 any other. 



In order to indicate more clearly and precisely the 

 possibility of incorporating the work in the school 

 garden with the rest of the subjects on the time-table, 

 it will be well to deal briefly with each of them and 

 point out the connection between the outdoor and 

 indoor occupation. 



Bearing in mind the occasion on which this paper 

 is read, and the character of the exhibition which has 

 been prepared with so much care, it will be well to 

 begin with Nature-study and its connection with 

 school gardens. 



One of the principal aims of Nature-study is to give 

 children a glimpse of animate nature — that is, of life 

 — by means of definite and carefully-guided observa- 

 tion of plants and animals as they actually live in 

 their ordinary surroundings. 



The separate heads under which this study is ap- 

 proached find their central meeting-place and bond of 

 union in the garden and its contents, and they are as 



