SCOUTING FOR GIRLS 
377 
activities of the Girl Scout are those civic problems which 
can only be solved by team-play; that is, by working 
together. Among these may be mentioned : The preser- 
vation of birds, wild flowers, and forests; control of 
mosquitoes, house-flies, rats, weeds, diseases of plants 
and animals, including man. 
The civic nature of these problems is appreciated when 
we realize that it would do little good, for example, for 
one person to destroy the breeding places of mosquitoes 
on his premises, if his neighbors did not do likewise 
about their homes; or for one orchardist to cut out the 
blight from his pear-trees or the black-knot from his 
plum-trees, if his neighbors did not co-operate with him 
by ridding their orchards of these diseases. 
These practical questions are so well presented, to- 
gether with plans for their solution, in Civic Biology, by 
Clifton F. Hodge and Jean Dawson (Ginn & Co.), that 
instead of going into details here, both the Girl Scouts 
and their Leaders are referred to this most useful work. 
All objects of Nature are either living (organic) or 
non-living (inorganic). The non-living bodies include 
the minerals and rocks. The living bodies are either 
plants or animals. Plants may be divided into two great 
groups, the flowerless plants and flowering plants. In 
general the flowerless plants reproduce by means of 
spores, like the mushroom and the ferns, while the flower- 
ing plants reproduce by means of seeds. 
x\nimals may be separated into two great groups, 
those without backbones (invertebrates) like an oyster, 
a cricket, or an earthworm, and those with backbones, 
e.g., a dog, a man. In this brief study we shall not go 
into much detail about invertebrates, but with the back- 
boned animals or vertebrates we shall go a little further. 
These may be divided into five general groups: (1) 
Fishes; (2) Amphibians, which include frogs, toads, and 
