92 THE BOOK OF NATURE STUDY 



their business to attend to the flower garden and window garden 

 rather than to the vegetable garden. At the same time, there is 

 no reason why girls should not be taught how to grow strawberries, 

 apples, raspberries, gooseberries, currants, and salad plants. 



The instruction should in all cases include sketching, drawing 

 to scale, calculations, elementary science and composition, but 

 no separate time-table for these sections should be drawn up, 

 for the course in gardening covers them all, and an efficient 

 teacher may be trusted to allocate the proper amount of time to 

 each part of the work. The sketching will deal with plants and 

 parts of plants ; with operations, such as grafting ; with appliances 

 or with areas, such as dimensioned sketch plans of gardens and 

 beds. Drawing to scale will be for the most part confined to the 

 plans of gardens and beds, or to sectional drawings of a tool- 

 house, hot-bed, frame, and so forth. Calculations will cover 

 areas of beds (whether circular, rectangular, or triangular) ; 

 weights and volume of seed and produce ; weights of artificial 

 manures and farmyard manure employed ; cost of seed, labour, 

 rent, and appliances ; value of produce ; average yields ; percen- 

 tages. It is highly important, more especially in the case of 

 country lads, that full attention should be given to the quantitative 

 side of the work. It is very desirable that some instruction should 

 be given in the chemistry of air, water, and carbon, otherwise 

 it is not possible for the pupils to understand how a plant feeds 

 and breathes. In addition, some attention should be given to 

 evaporation, solution, filtration, specific heat and the thermometer, 

 atmospheric pressure and the barometer. The soil of the garden 

 should be air dried, and its texture approximately determined. The 

 whole of this work in elementary physics and chemistry can be 

 carried out with quite inexpensive apparatus. If there is insufficient 

 apparatus to provide a set for each boy, the class should be formed 

 into groups, and each group should perform the experiments. 

 The pupils should themselves perform each little investigation. 

 What a boy finds out for himself becomes a part of his mental 

 equipment ; experiments which he sees the teacher perform make 

 but a comparatively feeble impression on his mind, while mere 

 lecturing by the teacher is frequently not only a waste of time 

 but may be positively harmful. 



