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If then this notice is not generally intelligible to children in 
the school-room when it is presented for study as a school- 
exercise, what can be expected of children who are out in holiday 
spirit and distracted by a thousand sights and sounds ? 
What is true of the ability of the child under twelve years of 
age to read and understand English, is also true of the majority 
of foreigners who come to the Garden. Many a parent, indeed, 
is wholly dependent upon his child to read and to interpret for 
him. 
Many groups of children may be seen in the Garden accompa- 
nied by no older person. I found one child of eight years in 
charge of four younger children! Now by far the greater part 
of the wild flower destruction is the work of children who are 
neither naughty nor wilful ; they are simply ignorant of the fact 
that they should not pick the wild flowers in the park, and they 
pick them because it is a natural inherent thing for the child to 
pick flowers, and because “everybody else does.”” It is unjust 
to blame these children; in justice to the child, the notice should 
be een to him. It need be neither large nor prominent, 
b be so simple that he who runs may read, and so 
frequent ae one could not escape seeing it. The number might 
well vary with the season, culminating at the time of the blossom- 
ing of the spring flowers and reaching the maximum in those 
places where they bloom in most tempting profusion. 
Finally there is the teacher. While it is true that more than 
once I learned of some teacher and her flock who picked flowers 
pela until stopped by the guards, and although there 
ists the special teacher who, more than any other, is tempted 
to alee the perspective and proportion of things in pushing her 
own particular interest, still I hold that the future of the wild 
flowers lies largely in the hands of the teacher. The lawless or 
heen or indifferent teacher is not the rule in New York or any 
other 
Thet meee supplements the teaching and training of the home. 
Let college presidents say what they will, it would bea sorry day 
if some morning the nation should awaken and find all the teachers 
married. Julia Ward Howe, full of years and wisdom, said of 
