372 
Garden Work 
many games to be played on them for a considerable period of each year, 
and some all the year round. Then farther north the plants met with are 
different in character, the leaves are smaller, such as the heaths, pines, &c., 
until the very hardiest of the pines only are able to withstand the rigours 
of the arctic winters. The leaves on such trees are small to allow the 
intensely cold winds to play through them without doing any damage. If 
the leaves of the trees of our climate were subjected to the same cold wind 
they would be torn to pieces by its force and shrivelled up by the cold. 
Hence we see how interesting the Geography lessons can be made to those 
children who know something of the cultivation of plants in the school 
garden. 
The garden is an ideal place in which to teach Nature Study. Here 
the children can study Nature in nearly all its branches. The soil can be 
examined, thus finding out that it is made up of large and small stones — 
some very small — and tiny particles of sand, which, of course, are simply 
minute stones. The various actions may be watched whereby the larger 
stones are gradually acted upon by the acids in the soil and the weak acids 
given out by the plant roots, and dissolved, forming liquid plant food when 
it is taken up by the plant through the porous walls of the root hairs. But 
there are other substances in the soil which are plainly seen not to be of 
mineral origin, such as the decaying roots of plants, &c. These, again, 
when converted into liquid, are absorbed by the root hairs as another valu- 
able part of the plant’s food. 
The plants may be carefully watched, how they grow from the germi- 
nation of the seed through all the stages of their development to the pro- 
duction of seed again. Or the various forms of plant life may be studied 
from the lowest forms — the Bacteria, or single-celled plants, which inhabit 
the soil in almost countless numbers; the Algae, green cells or green threads 
which are formed on the trunks or branches of trees, bushes, &c., and on 
the damp surface of soil; the Fungi, which grow as white threads and flat 
soft outgrowths from decaying wood, or as the umbrella-shaped growth 
from the ground : mushrooms, toadstools, &c. — to the higher forms of plant 
life. 
The Lichens, grey or yellowish, flat or fringed plants which grow on 
stones, tree trunks, &c. ; the Mosses, which grow in fringed tufts almost 
everywhere, on walls, on tree trunks, or on the soil ; the Liverworts, which 
grow in flat green patches on damp soils, &c. ; the Ferns, which grow in 
shady places on the soil or sometimes on the trunks of moss-covered trees; 
the flowering plants, which are the highest form of plants, and to which 
