62 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 469. 



of milk and cream in their presence, and much mate- 

 rial illustrating the composition and uses of the fluid, the 

 teacher gave to his class a simple and clear explanation of 

 such matters relating to the uses of milk and its composi- 

 tion as they could reasonably be expected to understand, 

 and as the different members of the class summed up 

 what they had listened to it was apparent that they 

 were well taught and that from that time forth their 

 knowledge of milk was considerably wider than it 

 would have been if they had never received the lesson. 

 The teacher had hung charts about the walls of his school- 

 room, pictures of agricultural implements and of dif- 

 ferent plants, and adjoining his school was a small gar- 

 den in which many kinds of plants were growing, and 

 where different methods of cultivation were tried for the 

 instruction of pupils. The teacher was not a mere book 

 man. His schoolroom was close by the rooms of the 

 village agricultural society, where there were collections 

 of seeds, charts with the composition of different fertilizers, 

 and many other things which would be of interest in the 

 discussions of the society, and which were available for 

 use in the school. He was secretary of this society. He 

 had aided the farmers in fitting up a cooperative dairy 

 supplied with the most approved appliances for the cream- 

 ery business, and by selecting, testing and purchasing 

 fertilizers for them, and in many other ways. It was 

 very plain that children trained under such circum- 

 stances would have a much broader outlook relating to 

 agriculture, and be more inclined to avail themselves of 

 advanced methods in agriculture than their fathers had 

 been. Of course, it will be many years, if not generations, 

 before we can hope for teachers of this sort in our country 

 primary schools. Undoubtedly they are rare, too, in 

 Europe, for only a beginning has been made in Germany, 

 for example, to provide instruction in agriculture in normal 

 schools. 



We have no space to speak of the so-called secondary 

 schools or schools of higher grade which are well provided 

 with apparatus, collections of various sorts and material 

 for illustration, nor of the institutions for higher agri- 

 cultural education in many European countries. We can 

 only say that it is not considered so important in these 

 latter institutions that students shall learn definite things 

 as that they shall acquire scientific methods of thought, 

 and that the best educators are by no means certain that 

 their systems cannot be largely improved. It will be a 

 long time before we can have anything like systematic 

 agricultural education either in common or high schools, 

 and the most that we can hope is that by means of 

 institutes and bulletins and the agricultural press the 

 results of our experiment station work can be made 

 directly useful to the farmers of the country, and that the 

 character of this work can be made better and better. We 

 cannot but feel, however, that an elementary knowledge of 

 plant-growth and of other processes of nature will sometime 

 be considered a natural part of the education of all boys and 

 girls in the country, and this not simply because it will 

 make them more successful farmers or fruit growers or 

 truck raisers, but because as a matter of mental discipline 

 it is an excellent schooling for anybody, helping to train 

 the mind to habits of observation which can be used in 

 any field of life, and giving a knowledge of facts and pro- 

 cesses which will furnish pleasure and entertainment in all 

 after life, even if it is not made directly profitable in work 

 on the farm or the garden. 



When a rock of any kind has lain for some time exposed to 

 the weather, Nature finishes it in her own way. First, she takes 

 wonderful pains about its forms, sculpturing it into exquisite 

 variety of dent and dimple, and rounding or hollowing it into 

 contours, which for fineness no human hand can follow ; then 

 she colors it ; and every one of her touches of color, instead 

 of being a powder mixed with oil, is a minute forest of living 

 trees, glorious in strength and beauty and concealing wonders 

 of structure. — John Ruskin, 



Notes on the Eastern American Spruces. 



IN the new Illustrated Flora of the Northern United Stales 

 and Canada, by Dr. N. L. Britton and Hon. Addison Brown, 

 the Black and Red Spruces are maintained as distinct spe- 

 cies, but there seems to be an unfortunate and, perhaps, 

 accidental confusion in the description and a transposition 

 of the figures. These two Spruces and the White Spruce 

 comprise the only species recognized in eastern North 

 America. In many of the modern writings, whenever the 

 Red Spruce has been recognized at all, it has been merely 

 mentioned as a variety of the Black Spruce, and the char- 

 acters which distinguish it have sometimes been very 

 vague. In the last edition of Gray's IManual the variety is 

 better characterized than in any of the earlier editions. 



With our present knowledge of these trees they appear 

 as distinct species, although it is true that individuals 

 apparently more or less intermediate in their superficial 

 characters are not unusual. 



The late Dr. George Lawson, of Halifax, Nova Scotia, 

 in a little paper on the Canadian Spruces, read before the 

 Royal Society of Canada in 1887, and apparently privately 

 printed, probably did more than anybody else to call atten- 

 tion to the differences between the species. This paper 

 has been reprinted by Professor Penhallow in the Ca?iadia?i 

 Record of Science for July, 1896. It appears that the Black 

 Spruce, generally known as Picea nigra, was first described 

 in the eighth edition of Miller's Gardeners' Dictionary (1768) 

 as Abies Mariana, "the Black Spruce Fir of North America, 

 with very small cones," and although the description is 

 not very specific it may stand for the Black Spruce as now 

 recognized. 



In New England and New York, and in the adjoining 

 states to the south and west, this tree is less abundant than 

 the Red Spruce, although it may be found in most regions 

 in which the latter grows. The Black Spruce, however, is 

 generally found in bogs, on the colder boggy lands, around 

 the shores of lakes, or wet places on hills and mountains ; 

 the Red Spruce, on the other hand, being found on the 

 better-drained or warmer lands, whether in valleys or 

 mountain slopes. In many localities the two species may 

 be found intermixed or close side by side, and in some 

 places the Black, Red and White Spruces may be found 

 together, as, for instance, at Kineo, at Moosehead Lake, in 

 Maine. Under favorable conditions the Black Spruce may 

 become a tall slender tree, but in its best development it is 

 smaller in size of tree, limb, twig and cone than the Red 

 Spruce. Growing in open places it may be furnished with 

 branches to the ground, but the branches are generally 

 shorter, more slender, and therefore more drooping, than 

 than those of the Red Spruce. The branches are less 

 regular in their growth — that is, they are not so uniformly 

 graded in length from base to summit — which often gives 

 the tree a straggly appearance and less of the regular 

 conical aspect of the Red Spruce. As a rule they are much 

 depressed instead of horizontal. The twigs are pubescent, 

 with fine rusty brown hair or occasionally nearly glabrous, 

 and are generally of a darker, duller red-brown color than 

 those of the Red Spruce ; and they are commonly more 

 slender, the lateral ones becoming depressed or pendent. 



The leaves generally seem shorter and less pointed than 

 those of the Red Spruce, and they stand more erect or 

 brush-like on the twigs. The distinctly dark blue green 

 or glaucous color of the foliage at once distinguishes it 

 from the Red Spruce and gives it more of the aspect of the 

 White Spruce, with which it has occasionally been con- 

 founded. On the tops of the trees or on the fruiting 

 branches the leaves are often shorter and blunter than on 

 the lower or non-fruiting branches. 



In cold, wet, spongy, sphagnous bogs, where there is 

 no real soil and the sphagnum sinks below water-level 

 when trodden upon, the trees may be found bearing cones 

 when less than three feet high and with stems less than an 

 inch in diameter. Such diminutive trees may be many years 

 old, scores of years old in fact, and are to be found in 



