134 
AMERICAN POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. • 
is most familiar is here exemplified by about ninety-seven per cent of those 
who have attended the school of agriculture being found among horticultur- 
ists or on farms or in occupations closely connected with farm life. It is 
•shown, too, that it is entirely practicable to hold such a school during the 
winter months, when the boys can most easily be spared from the farm, and 
that while the benefits of field work are not fully available in winter, yet with 
suitable greenhouses and illustrations this difficulty can be largely overcome, 
and is more than outweighed by the advantage of holding the session at a 
time when the sons of farmers can easily attend. And in having the boys 
on the farms of the state during the growing session so they do not get out 
of touch with practical country life. Besides, the students can gain a working 
knowledge of field conditions far better in working for practical horticultur- 
ists and agriculturists than by any field instruction that could be given to a 
large number of students in any educational institution. And the economic 
side is then kept continually before the student, which is very important. 
It seems to me that in this country we have paid too much attention to the 
higher phase of agricultural education and too little to the education of the 
hard headed boys who have to do the practical work, and that we should 
profit by the. experience of Germany, France and other European countries, 
and increase the agricultural schools of the lower grade's. There are in 
Prussia, at least one hundred and two schools of agriculture of about our 
high school grade and they have introduced agricultural instruction into what 
would correspond to our district schools. Of these latter there are over one 
thousand in Prussia in the rural districts where the children are taught some 
of the rudiments of agriculture and most of these schools have a garden in 
connection with them. These low grade schools are being rapidly increased 
in number and are looked upon as being exceedingly helpful and desirable 
by the best educators in Germany and our experiment in Minnesota it 
seems to me, indicates that they would be fully as desirable here. 
HORTICULTURE OF MONTANA. 
BY PROF. S. M. EMERY, DIRECTOR AND HORTICULTURIST, MONTANA 
EXPERIMENT STATION, BOZEMAN, MONTANA. 
Give us the halcyon days of “never change” or the time when history once 
written stands for all time, when new and varied experiences do not come 
rushing pell mell to the front, riding down and trampling into the dust, those 
of other days and the blessed Nirvana of the Buddhist will be attained; both 
students and authors will have reached the millennium. 
Scientists having access to. the reduced experience of the ages and likewise 
to field glasses so powerful that they can read the thoughts of the man in 
the moon, pretend, in a fashion, to predict, to foretell, and prognosticate from 
season to season, the workings of the weather. If they hit it, well and good. 
If they miss it, well— that is the fault of the season of course. 
Those of us whose locks have been silvered by the flight of time, whose 
lot has been cast on the great northwestern frontier, where weather is made 
to order, know that each decade the gods give to us the very dregs of the 
weather cup, and that then we get the ivorst weather known to the oldest 
inhabitant. We know, too, that the trees able to take all the fickle, climatic 
changes which come' to the border states of the Union and preserve unchanged 
