JOURNAL 
The New York Botanical Garden 
VoL. ro. X a — December, 1909. No, 120 
COOPERATION IN THE NATURE-~STUDY WORK OF 
THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 
The plan of giving lectures and demonstrations to children and 
teachers of the public schools, in order to aid them in their 
botanical nature-study work, commenced several years ago and 
since continued during the spring and autumn months, has always 
been productive of increased interest in the general work of the 
Garden. The privilege has naturally been mainly taken advan- 
tage of by the schools of the Borough of the Bronx, though 
some of the Manhattan schools have been at times represented, 
and it is planned that they will send more children than hereto- 
fore next spring. 
The schools select a certain number of teachers and children 
from grades 4B and 5B, it being, of course, impossible to send 
entire classes. They reach the lecture-hall in the museum build- 
ing at 2 o’clock ; the lectures require about half an hour and the 
children and ieachiers then proceed in detachments to points in 
the buildings and in the grounds, where they are met by Garden 
aids and assistants and the subject of the lecture more fully 
demonstrated by living plants and actual specimens. The oppor- 
tunity to lecture to large numbers of children is taken advantage 
of to impress upon them the necessity for the proper care an 
protection of street trees and park plantations generally, as well 
as instructing them in the elementary facts concerning the 
growth of plants, their uses, their diseases and their pee 
tion. 
The following report by Principals Stevens and Seelye will be 
273 
