naturalist clubs, each club being under the general guidance of a teacher; and many thousand children are enrolled in a campaign for gardening.

The beginnings of a normal department have been made in the State College of Agriculture, at Cornell University. This is a special two-years' course designed for the training of teachers in nature-study and agriculture. The work is in two parts: the regular academic or subject-matter in the biological sciences; the practice-work with children. This practice-work is conducted in the public schools of Ithaca which are accessible for this purpose. There are also rather extensive school gardens in the City of Ithaca which are under the joint managership of the College of Agriculture and the public schools. In these gardens the teacher-students may receive instruction. The College of Agriculture recently erected a rural-school building on its campus. and it is the purpose to organize a regular rural school with children coming from the adjacent farming-country. School gardens and playgrounds are being established in connection with it. It is the plan of the College of Agriculture to organize a summer school (with the expectation that it may be open in 1908) for teachers in agriculture and country-life subjects.

A crystallized movement is now on foot in New York looking toward the better supervision of rural schools. Two bills are before the legislature outlining plans of reorganization. The general purpose is to establish an educational qualification for supervisory officers; to remove the election of such officers, so far as possible, from political influences; to provide that such officers shall devote their entire time to the work of supervision; so to reorganize the districts that they shall be small enough to enable the supervisory officer to inspect the work of each school at least once each month.

In 1906 the legislature of the state appropriated $80,000 for buildings for a school of agriculture at St. Lawrence University, at Canton, in the northern part of the state. Buildings will be erected in 1907.

The Belleville Academy, in Jefferson county, has a small endowment for the teaching of agriculture. The subject is taught in connection with the natural sciences.

III. EXPERIENCES AND OPINIONS OF INDIVIDUAL TEACHERS IN THE PRECEDING TERRITORY

It will be impossible to assemble all the experiences in any one state. Many teachers have tried industrial training of one kind or another and with varying degrees of success; but no record may have been made of it. Teachers come and go. In the course of a large correspondence, however, a number of experiences and opinions have accumulated, some of which may be recorded.

MAINE

W. M. Munson, professor of horticulture in the University of Maine, is of the opinion that the teachers must first be aroused and equipped to the end that they may introduce informal exercises. We are now overloaded with textbooks. The agricultural colleges and superintendents of public instruction

may do a work of untold value by issuing schedules and suggestive leaflets from time to time and by making such work prominent in summer schools and at teachers' institutes. Personal contact rather than textbooks or scheduled courses must be relied on to awaken an interest in young children. Three or four teachers in the state have had definite experience in this kind of work and have made more or less of a success.

Mrs. V. P. DeCoster, Buckfield, writes as follows:

My work has not been systematic, and the results are difficult to know. I am a farmer's wife, with a family of children, and have had a nature-class at home, and at the nearby rural school, using as aids the Cornell and Kingston leaflets. Have also given lectures before Granges, clubs, pomological and horticultural meetings, teachers, etc., and thus organized some nature-classes and interested others. I notice everywhere the interest is spreading, but find little practical work in our rural schools. The teachers are mostly ignorant or indifferent and overworked along other lines. Our normal schools and colleges give them only superficial training. There is better work done in our cities. I do not know if it would be practical or whether the money could be raised, but it seems to me that a specially trained teacher could do fine work by having a central manual-training school in a village high school and also supervise school gardens and agricultural work in quite a number of rural schools. I find that lessons amount to little unless the scholars do personal work. I have tried giving them seeds and found they did not take half the interest that they did when they earned them and made their own garden. One little girl even had a tooth pulled without gas that she might save the extra cost with which to buy tulip bulbs Mr.Irving D. Bragg, principal of the Aroostook State Normal School, at Presque Isle, writes as follows:

The normal schools of Maine have taken up work in agriculture this year. The schools have been left to work out courses as seem best adapted to the particular locality. In this school the subjects of zoology, geology, bird-study, nature-study, chemistry, and botany are treated with special reference to agriculture. In the last term a textbook is used as a guide. This is, of course, only a beginning, and as soon as possible the scope of the work will be enlarged to meet the demand for work of this kind. Manual training has not been introduced into this school yet. Owing to the seasons in this part of the country, school gardening cannot be carried on very successfully during the school year. Consequently, little is done along this line. It is the policy of this school to introduce the above subjects as rapidly as possible, considering the needs and demands of the section of the state in which we are located.

NEW HAMPSHIRE

The State Agricultural College is co-operating with Hon. H. C. Morrison, state superintendent of public instruction, in suggesting curricula for the public schools in which agriculture is introduced. The outline of studies for the grammar grades has already been published and the college is now working on an agricultural course for high schools. There are probably no high schools in the state in which the work is actually being carried on. Thru the influence of Professor C. M. Weed (who has now left the state) much interest was aroused in many schools in the subject of nature-study.

Professor G. H. Whitcher, of Berlin, at one time introduced local work into one of the rural schools and continued it until he removed to a city. He expresses his experience as follows:

I fully believe the country is the place to start this rather than the city, because it is there that the child becomes a systematic observer of farm operations; the dairy, etc., harvesting operations, planting, etc., all afford opportunity for "laboratory" work and observation and schoolroom experimentation then comes in to supplement and explain the things observed.

My plan commenced with the first grade with modeling, drawing, and coloring farm products, e. g., potato, apple, beet, etc., and developed up to pot experiments in the eighth grade with fertilizers, etc. I do not think this work is attractive to city pupils because their "experience" is inadequate to interpret results observed. The Herbartian view of the "apperceiving mass" of ideas as essential to the proper assimilation of new sense material seems to justify the belief that country children are best provided with this "mass.”

More than ever I believe that rural schools ought to utilize the home industry as a means of awakening the young minds. It seems strange that our theories of education should be based on the notion of utilizing the environment and yet our practice in the country seldom utilizes the one great industry, agriculture.

MASSACHUSETTS

Much excellent nature-study and school-gardening work is being conducted in various schools in Massachusetts. There are few places apparently in which it is given a distinctly agricultural aspect in the rural elementary schools. Professor W. A. Baldwin, principal of the State Normal School, at Hyannis, made the following suggestions for an industrial high school to the commission appointed by Governor Douglas to investigate the question of the establishment of trade schools in Massachusetts.

The following plan seems to me to be feasible for adoption in the near future:

1. I would like to see the state of Massachusetts establish a school in the country adapted to the needs of the children of the country.

2. It should receive children of high-school age from the town in which it is located and from neighboring towns.

3. It should teach boys and girls how to make a success of farming, gardening, fruitgrowing and poultry-raising in Massachusetts. This industrial training should be supplemented by such training in science, literature, and sociology as the ordinary farmer needs. 4. The school should start on a large tract of abandoned farm land.

5. The improvement of land, construction of buildings, etc., should be done by the students.

6. The school should from the first be in close touch with the community, both giving and receiving suggestions and encouragement.

Some of the reasons why such a plan as the above seems to me a good one with which to start this movement are as follows:

1. The need for such work exists in the country as well as in the city.

2. Such a plan will not meet with opposition on the part of labor leaders.

3. It would not be an expensive experiment.

4. It would serve as a pattern for the various towns of the state.

5. Towns desiring to follow this example might be granted state aid for the maintenance of similar schools.

6. If the plan works out satisfactorily it will be easy to modify it, applying the same principles to different forms of work adapted to the needs of one manufacturing city.

7. Time will be given for the careful study of the problem and for the conversion of labor leaders to the trade school idea.

8. Such a school would be full of valuable suggestions for public schools of grammar and high-school grade.

Mr. Baldwin adds the following suggestion:

I believe myself that the nature-study and school-garden work which is being done in the lower grades of some of our schools is much more far-reaching in child development than the work suggested for pupils of high-school grade. Is there not chance in the present demand for industrial training of neglecting the work which is appropriate for children of the primary and grammar grades? In these grades agriculture must be conducted at a loss financially, but the effect upon the developing soul is not to be computed. On the other hand, no other point in our public-school system is now so weak as the high school.

Professor E. F. Howard, superintendent of schools, East Northfield, Mass., writes as follows:

I have thought about this matter much, with special reference to my own district. My towns are all rural, and the children are from farmers' homes for the most part. I have thought that it is hardly possible to do work in the rural schools that could properly be called agricultural; we do nature-work, and that is a good preparation for the other work when the pupils are old enough to undertake it with some prospect of making a success of the study. The principles involved are so difficult, and considerable knowledge of chemical actions so necessary to a thoro understanding of agriculture, and so much judgment is required in applying the knowledge acquired that it seems to me the whole subject demands more intellectual power than is found outside of the high schools. The difficulty with which we should be able to obtain teachers who have the knowledge required, and who have the enthusiasm absolutely indispensable for success in this line of work, is so great that I do not think we shall ever have more than an occasional success in our rural schools as now organized.

I am handing you some pamphlets that will indicate a line of work in which I am interested. The course in sewing is being wrought out in some of my schools, and I am planning a course of work in wood and one in blacksmithing that can be wrought out by boys at home either with or without the supervision of the school. It is my thought that much may be done under the inspiration of the school even though it be not directly under its supervision. These particular courses are to be presented by the Valley Fair, but I am hoping to make the fair my ally in getting the work started in my schools. I have feared that almost any course that we should find published would be too heavy for my schools. We need the simplest things to start with, always having in mind the fact that the work must be made to appeal to the parents, who look with doubt upon any new thing in the way of schoolwork. I have tried to get into my courses useful things and things that would appear valuable almost every day of a farmer's life. I have models of my course in blacksmithing, but not in woodwork.

I do not think much work is being done in this county-Franklin-in the study of agriculture at present. Superintendent G. A. Grover, Charlemont, has made use of a book somewhat, just how much I do not know. Superintendent E. W. Goodhue, Haydenville, has had some experience with home gardens, for which he has furnished seeds. Superintendent A. L. Hardy, Amherst, has had some experience with the ordinary school garden. I do not favor the school garden for rural schools. The care of it in summer when school is out would be fatal to success-the boys have too much work at home. I do favor the home garden under school inspiration, but most of the homes have good gardens, and the boys get all the work they want in them under parental supervision. I do not think there is much education in the work, however. If we could get the boys started in agriculture in such a manner that they would be made to see the dignified and scientific side of it, and if it could be so conducted that they could escape the laborious and slavish toil of it, there would be some hope for their future choice of this calling.

G. Alvin Grover, superintendent of schools at Charlemont, writes:

I have used, for the past two years, in the intermediate and grammar grades of my mixed country schools, Burdet, Stevens, and Hill's Agriculture for Beginners, Ginn & Co. This has been used as a supplementary reader with the information side made very prominent. Children have been urged and encouraged to put in practice in their own home gardens and about their premises, the suggestions made in this volume, and to report results at school. They have voluntarily done this to a gratifying extent. In some instances when conditions were favorable, school gardens have been started and experiments made therein. Some of the pupils have concluded from these experiments that they know more than the authors of the book. All seem to enthuse over the subject, and the interest is marked. The only opposition comes from those parents who are "Grand-daddy blind." The coming spring we expect to make more definite requirements. I am planning a corn contest. The boys are to plant the corn at their own homes, and in the fall enter not less than six ears in competition for a suitable prize at our Agricultural Society Fair. I have also arranged for the judges (adults) when awarding premiums on all kinds of stock, to be accompanied by a committee of boys, who shall make their awards independent of the judges. I am not an ardent advocate of school gardens. I rather think it better that each pupil should have a garden of his own at home. I know of no more effectual way of uniting the school and the home.

In regard to industrial training, it is my belief that the day is far off when we can put manual training into our rural schools, as a separate and independent addition to the curriculum. I do think that the pupils can profitably be encouraged and required to make both at home and school those things of which they read and study in their regular textbooks, or at least models or representations of the same. For instance, boys in the fifth grade, when they read of Eli Whitney's cotton gin, are required to make at home, a machine that will illustrate the principle. I could show you Lincoln's log cabin, the pyramids of Egypt with the Sphinx, maps of all kinds molded in relief, a logging camp, the Clermont (Fulton's first steamboat), and so on. We have done some basketry and embroidery, but in no case is it allowed to interfere with the regular work. We find that the work is done more quickly and in a better manner, when we hold the manual training out as an inducement.

Writing a year later, Superintendent Grover says:

Our corn contest referred to last year was a complete success, more than 70 per cent. of the boys voluntarily entering the same, and over half of that number actually making an exhibit. At the same time the girls entered a flower contest conducted in the same manner and with equally good results.

Because of lack of co-operation on the part of the adults, it has not been possible to carry out the plan of instructing the boys in livestock. We are going to try again this year, and keep on trying until we meet with success.

E. W. Goodhue, superintendent of schools at Haydenville, writes as follows:

Last year all towns in this district united in attempting some instruction in the rudiments of scientific agriculture. Textbooks for reference were placed in nearly all schools and seeds furnished the pupils at a fraction of actual cost. Blanks on which were to be recorded by the pupil his observations of plant growth, effects of different soils and fertilizers, together with a statement of final results were also supplied. These, when filled, were returned to me. The results, while not fully up to our expectations, were good and there was abundant evidence of careful cultivation of the gardens and thoughtful observation. We are greatly encouraged and shall continue the work this year. One boy, of about ten years of age, who purchased fifteen cents' worth of seeds reported that he had sold from the crops three dollars' worth for cash besides retaining sufficient for family