Let us have common plants, and more glorifying of the commonplace, more of the spirit of Rennie, the naturalist:

"It can never be too strongly impressed upon a mind anxious for the acquisition of knowledge, that the commonest things by which we are surrounded are deserving of minute and careful attention."

If there is not room for all, set aside the geranium, and substitute a squash vine; set aside the calla, and substitute a beet; a turnip is as interesting and a good deal more important than a fuschia. There is much wisdom wrapped up in a cabbage head, provided it comes from the field.

Keep in mind that the object is to make the child not a botanist, but a lover of natural beauty, to develop his capacity to appreciate Nature's commonplace things. As Professor Bailey puts

it :

"The happiness of the ignorant man is largely the thoughts born of physical pleasure; that of the educated man is the thoughts born of intellectual pleasures. One may find comradeship in a groggery, the other may find it in a dandelion; and inasmuch as there are more dandelions than groggeries in most communities, the educated man has the greater chance of happiness.

"If one is to be happy, he must be in sympathy with common things. He must live in harmony with his environment. One cannot be happy yonder nor to-morrow; he is happy here and now, or never. Our stock of knowledge of common

things should be great. Few of us can travel. We must know the things at home."

Note

Study these common plants of the garden and of the field, in the schoolroom as well as in their natural habitat. Then do not look down so often that you fail to note the glorious things above and the grand plants in the forest. the struggle for existence in the shrubs and tangled undergrowth on the borders of the meadows and in the swamps. In the forest you may see the victors that have fought successfully with their rivals of long ago, and now have the field pretty completely to themselves. Thus viewed, the plants become sentient things. We discover life in them, and love them.

"The nature study that is true to child life must first of all afford free scope to the passion for activity and guide this toward wholesome channels. It should at the same time infuse life and spontaneity into school work, and so lighten rather than increase the task of the teacher."

PROF. CLIFTON F. HODge.

"Nature Study should lead to a sympathetic acquaintance with living plants and animals in their natural environment."-A. C. BOYDEN.

"This introductory relationship with Nature is a resource of inexhaustible delight and enrichment; to establish it ought to be as much a part of every education as the teaching of the rudiments of formal knowledge; and it ought to be as great a reproach to a man not to be able to read the open pages of the world about him as not to be able to read the open page of the book before him. It is a matter of instinct with a few; it may be a matter of education with all. Even those who are born with the eyes and ears of naturalists must reinforce their native aptitude by training."-HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE.

"Is there anything more delightful than the fatigue of a summer afternoon's long ramble after objects one loves? You are not tired of them, but with them. It is a delicious fatigue. Subsequent years of trouble cannot obliterate the charmed impressions. They are the sunniest spots in one's memory. Their recollections come, like angels' visits, to unconsciously relieve us in after-years of many a sad trouble and trial. They should be laid up in store when you are young, so that they can be drawn upon when you are old. Then the sunshine of youth is stored to gild the troubled days of matured manhood and the darker shadows of old age."-DR. J. E. TAYLOR, in “ The Playtime Naturalist."

CHAPTER XIV

SCHOOL GARDENS

Plants need food, not necessarily earth, because earth is merely the matrix that contains the food in a more or less extended form. The rootlets of the plant will explore every tiny space about and among the particles of soil for a bit of nutriment in solution.

I never see a rootlet or a root-hair without thinking of the proboscides of honey bees. The bee explores many a flower for a drop of nectar. She gathers from all sources, till by her efforts, combined with those of thousands of others, sufficient food is provided for the entire colony. As each bee explores the flowers of a certain territory, gathering the greater portion of the nectar within that region, so each root-hair searches over, around, under, its small domain of perhaps a dozen microscopic granules, or within its little mass of partly decayed vegetable mould, each working in cooperation with legions of others, so that the entire plant is provided with sustenance, as the bees

working in company collect for the whole swarm. This is the natural method of gathering honey. To understand it fully, the work of a swarm should be actually seen. But to enable us to make a careful study of their actions, it is not really necessary for the bees to collect the nectar in the manner ordained by nature. They may be artificially fed.

So in studying plants, it is well to know at least a few as they grow in the soil, whether in the field, the garden, or a box of earth. But, fortunately, it is not necessary that all our investigations should be made in this manner. The method can be adapted to the materials at hand in the country; indeed, the young people's study of plants should be mostly of those in their natural environments, with a few artificially fed, so as to bring the entire organism under immediate and close inspection.

The conditions are reversed for the city child. He has few opportunities for access to plants in their native places, limited as he is to the trees and shrubs in the public park, or to those seen on an occasional visit in the country. Here enters the special advantage of artificial culture.

As has been said, the plant does not want the