December 31, 1890.] 



Garden and Forest. 



629 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office : Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted by Professor C. S. Sargent. 



ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE POST OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. V. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1890. 

 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles :— Elementary Botany for Young People 629 



The Beginnings of Fruit-culture in Germany 630 



Vancouver's Park. (With illustration.) Charles M. Skinner. 630 



Basket- Work of the North American Indians. — II. Dr. V.Havard, U.S.A. 631 

 The Spotted Willow- twig Aphis. (With figures.) 



Professor Clarence M. Weed. 632 



Plant Notes : — Some Recent Portraits 632 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter W. Watson. 633 



Cultural Department : — Fern Notes W. H. Taplin. 634 



Tuberous Begonias Henry McCrowe. 634 



Brodiseas Carl Purdy. 636 



Hardy Plant Notes E.O. Orpet. 636 



The Forest : — Some Vermont Forests F. H. Horsford. 637 



Correspondence : — The Nomenclature of American Grapes T. V. Munson. 637 



Clematis Paniculata J. N. G. 638 



Recent Publications 638 



Horticulture in Canada : — Meeting of the Ontario Fruit Growers' Association. 638 



Notes 640 



Illustrations :— Spotted Willow-twig Aphis : Oviparous female (magnified), 



Fig. 83 632 



Winged male (magnified). Fig. 84 632 



a, Egg, magnified ; b, Eggs and oviparous females on Willow-twig, Fig. 85. 632 

 A Roadway in Stanley Park, Vancouver 635 



Elementary Botany for Young People. 



I AST spring a child's paper published in Boston offered 

 _^ a reward to any little one who would collect between 

 the 1st of May and the last of September fifty kinds of na- 

 tive flowers and send in a list of their names. A small boy 

 in Newark, New Jersey, began with flowers of the Dande- 

 lion, Chickweed, Violet, Spring Beauty, and some others, 

 found in back-yards and vacant city lots, and then, as his 

 collection halted, his mother accompanied him on a short 

 ride into the country one May afternoon, and the list was 

 increased by the Columbine, Hepatica, Dog-tooth Violet, 

 Azalea, Strawberry, Geranium and several more. This was 

 the beginning of a quest which was kept up with un- 

 flagging enthusiasm until the season of Golden Rods and 

 Asters, and now his mother, under the title of "A Memory 

 of Summer," has just published in The Sunday Call an en- 

 tertaining account of the little collector's work. The list 

 numbers less than a hundred, but it is pleasant to learn that 

 the writer now finds herself "associating certain times and 

 places with the finding of certain wild flowers " ; but the 

 point of most importance is that the child has begun the 

 study of botany, and has begun it in the field and not in a 

 school-book. 



At this age of the world there ought to be no need of ex- 

 plaining how the mental processes employed in the inves- 

 tigation of natural objects which come within the scope of 

 a given science differ from those used in studying a written 

 treatise on the same science. The ordinary method is to 

 place a book before the child and bid him memorize the 

 facts which have been discovered by others. What seems 

 the more natural plan is to encourage him to study the ob- 

 jects themselves, to compare them and classify them — in 

 short, to do exactly the kind of work that the most advanced 

 scientific explorers are engaged in. It ought to be noted, 

 however, that the profoundest investigator is only carrying 

 on in remoter fields the work which every child begins 

 long before he can read or even speak ; that is, he is 

 familiarizing himself, by the actual use of his senses, with 

 the objects about him, and making himself systematically 

 acquainted with their qualities. It would seem to be the 



part of reason to encourage the exercise of those faculties 

 which give habits of observation and comparison instead 

 of permitting them to grow feeble through disuse during 

 the years of school-life. No doubt it is proper to impart 

 dogmatic information to the young, but it will hardly be 

 urged that this is the chief end of an education. It is cer- 

 tainly worth something to a man to have eyes which do 

 not fail to see the objects that surround him and a mind 

 alert to note their relations and to draw inferences from 

 them; and this is an equipment which the proper study of 

 natural science furnishes. 



Bearing in mind that the facts acquired are of less im- 

 portance than the mental attitude and aptitude encouraged, 

 the science of botany offers unusual advantages for devel- 

 oping the power of systematic observation. The material 

 objects needed for the study are constantly present in 

 infinite variety, abundance and beauty. In the example 

 alluded to at the opening of this article flowers alone are 

 spoken of, and if the sole use made of them was to identify 

 the plants by name the educational value of the summer's 

 collecting was comparatively slight. The naming of the 

 plants is an unimportant matter compared with a study of 

 their points of similarity and contrast and the effort to 

 group them according to their affinities. But the flower is 

 a small part of the plant, and the study need not lag when 

 flowers are gone. Every tree now furnishes obvious 

 characters in its general form, and in the way this form is 

 developed by the peculiar ramification of its branches; in the 

 color and texture of its bark, in the scars which show the 

 arrangement of its leaves, in its spray and winter-buds. 

 Broad leaved evergreens and conifers would furnish leaves 

 if window plants could not be found in every house, and, 

 as Professor Ward has observed, even at this season the 

 nature of a Hyacinth-bulb can be studied in contrast with 

 that of a Potato-tuber, and every nut or apple or orange 

 that a child eats could be made an interesting study under 

 proper guidance. 



In short, there is no season when the child cannot make 

 direct personal observations of plants, and when, under a 

 skillful teacher, he cannot be drawn out into an intelligent 

 description of what he sees. Moreover, there are no objects 

 more attractive to the young, more agreeable or con- 

 venient to handle or better adapted to close observation 

 and exact description. Professor Marshal Ward brought 

 out these truths with great clearness in an address before 

 the British Association for the Advancement of Science at 

 its late meeting, and in regard to the proper method of 

 teaching elementary observational botany he said : 



The teaching of elementary botany to children should 

 commence with the observation of external form, and might 

 well be initiated by a comparative study of the shapes of 

 leaves, the peculiarities of insertion, their appendages, and so 

 on. The point never to be lost sight of is that if you teach a 

 child to discriminate, with the plants in hand and from obser- 

 vation only, between such objects as the simple, heart-shaped, 

 opposite, ex-stipulate stalked leaves of a Lilac, and the com- 

 pound, pinnate, alternate, stipulate leaves of a Rose, you lay 

 the foundations of a power for obtaining knowledge which is 

 in no way to be measured merely by the amount or kind of 

 information imparted. It does not matter whether the child 

 learns the trivial facts mentioned above, or not, but it is of the 

 highest importance that the child be taught how to obtain 

 knowledge by such direct observation and comparison ; and 

 the beauty of it all is that, as is well known, the child will 

 retain most of such information as mere matter of course. 



There is one danger to be avoided, however. Young chil- 

 dren should not be troubled with the difficulties of theoretical 

 morphology ; they should be made familiar with the more 

 obvious roots, stems, leaves, tendrils, thorns, flowers, etc., and 

 not forced to concern themselves with such ideas as that the 

 flower is a modified shoot, the bulb a bud, etc., until they have 

 learned simply to observe and compare accurately. Later on 

 the step must be taken of rousing their minds to the necessity 

 of drawing further conclusions from their comparative observa- 

 tions ; but, if the teacher is really capable of teaching, it will 

 be found that the children begin to suggest these conclusions 

 themselves, and, this stage once reached, the success of the 

 method is ensured. 



