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SCHOOL GARDENS OF THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS. 
Vaughan MacCaughey, College of Hawaii, in the Southern 
Workman. 
School gardens are preeminently local products. They re- 
flect their environment as truly as does a placid, green-girt 
lake. They are affected largely by immediately impinging 
conditions. General statements may. be made concerning 
the educational principles involved, but the practical devel- 
opment and success of any school garden must ultimately 
find its basis on keen sight into, and compliance with, en- 
vironmental influences. 
The evolution of the school gardens as a part of the edu- 
cational system of the Territory of Hawaii, is a fitting illus- 
tration of the above remarks. The Hawaiians (or Sandwich 
Islanders, as they were called in the early days) were nat- 
urally an agricultural people. Their food supply came chiefly 
from the fertile lowlands that engirdle the Islands, and 
from the nearby ocean. Taro, coconuts, breadfruit, bananas, 
yams, sweet potatoes, and a few wild fruits of minor im- 
portance constituted their vegetable food. Fish, fowl, hog, 
and dog supplied the remainder of their diet. The pounded 
and fermented root of the taro, forming a starchy paste called 
poi, was their chief dish. “Poi and fish” is a by-word here 
for a meal. The limited area of the Islands restricted no- 
madism ; the entire lack of large game cut off hunting ; and 
the absence of grazing domestic animals prevented pastoral 
life. Thus this brown-skin people was compelled, perforce, 
to accept a stable, agricultural existence. 
They were peaceable farmers and fishermen, not savage 
cannibals, as were their kin of the South Seas. Periodically, 
at various favorite places, great markets and fairs were held. 
Here the best handiwork and finest crops and livestock were 
exhibited and sold. These great fairs were surprisingly like 
the modern county fair of the Middle States, and were de- 
cidedly agricultural. 
DEVELOPMENT. 
When Captain Cook discovered the Islands in 1778, he re- 
marked the extensiveness of the cultivated lands along the 
seashore ; and it was appropriate that in the first band of 
missionaries sent hither, there should be a skilled farmer 
and mechanic, Mr. Daniel Chamberlain. In several years 
he and his family instructed the natives in agriculture and 
the rudiments of mechanic arts. 
The first school garden was undoubtedly established by the 
