eo2 Handbook of Nature-Study 



how the flowers arc arranged so that insects can carry pollen from 

 flower to flower? 



7. What is the green swelling in the stem at the base of the trumpet? 

 Is it connected with the style? Cut it across and describe what you see. 

 How do the young seeds look and how are they arranged? 



8. Where the flower stem joins the stalk, what do you see? What is 

 this dry spathe there for? Are there one or more flower stems coming 

 from this spathe ? 



(,. Describe the flower stalk? Are the leaves wide or narrow? Are 

 they as long as the flower stalk, are they flat, or are they grooved to fit 

 around the flower stalk? 



10. What are the differences between daffodils, jonquils and poet's 

 narcissus? When should the bulbs for these flowers be planted? Will 

 there be more bulbs formed around the one you plant? Will the same 

 bulb ever send up flowers and leaves again? How do the bulbs divide to 

 make new bulbs? 



11. How should the bed for the bulbs be prepared? How near 

 together should the bulbs be planted? How deep in the earth? How 

 protect them in the North during the winter? 



12. Why should you not cut the leaves off after the flowers have died? 

 Why should you not let the seeds ripen? When should the flowers be cut 

 for bouquets? Who was Narcissus, and why should these early spring 

 flowers be named after him? 



Supplementary reading — Green Things Growing, Mulock; The Daffo- 

 dils, Wordsworth; The Story of Narcissus, Child's Study of the Classics; 

 Mary's Garden, Duncan, Chapters XXVI and XXVII. 



"/ emphatically deny the common notion that the farm boy's life is drudgery. Much of 

 the work is laborious, and this it shares with all work that is productive; for the easier the 

 job the less it is worth doing. Bui every piece of farm work is also an attempt to solve a 

 problem, and therefore it should have its intellectual interest; and the problems are as many 

 as the hours of the day and as varied as the face of nature. It needs but the informing of the 

 mini and the quickening of the imagination to raise any constructive work above the level of 

 drudgery. It is not mere dull work to follow the plow — / have followed it (lay after day — if 

 one is conscious of all the myriad forces that are set at work by the breaking of the furrow; 

 and there is always the landscape, the free fields, the clean soil, the rain, the promise of the 

 crops. Of all men's labor, the farmer' s is the most creative. I cannot help wondering why 

 it is that men will eagerly seek work in the grease and grime of a noisy factory, but will recoil 

 at what they call the dirty work of the farm. So much are we yet bound by tradition!" 



— L. H. Bailey. 



