Nature studies on the farm : soils and plants

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http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924094808965

Nature Studies on the Farm

SOILS AND PLANTS

BY
CHARLES A. KEFFER

PROFESSOR OF H NIVERSITY

NEW YORK •:• CINCINNATI •:• CHICAGO
AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY

Copyright, 1907, by
CHARLES A. KEFFER.

NATURE STUDIES ON THE FARM.
W. P. 4

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Introduction 7

II. Origin of Soils 13

III. Kinds of Soil 16

IV. The Plant and the Soil 20

V. Little Rivers under the Ground .... 25

VI. What the Forest does for the Soil ... 30

VII. The Robber Farmer 38

VIII. Weeds ... 41

IX. What the Russian Thistle Did .... 48

X. The Plant's Business 51

XI. Buds and Seeds 57

XII. Why do we Plow ? 62

XIII. Give the Crops Plenty to Eat .... 68

XIV. Sowing the Seed 74

XV. Round and Round the Farm .... 78

XVI. Stirring the Soil 82

XVII. The Hoed Crops 87

XVIII. The Cereals . 92

XIX. In the Meadow 95

XX. Two Cousins 102

5

6

PAGE

XXI. A Blanket Garden 107

XXII. Cuttings 112

XXIII. Transplanting 116

XXIV. Rob's Garden . 120

XXV. The Orchard 126

XXVI. The Grateful Plants 131

Suggestions to Teachers „ 137

NATURE STUDIES ON THE FARM

I. INTRODUCTION

No boy or girl who has always lived in the country
will need to be introduced to plants, as though they
were strangers ; but I want you not only to be ac-
quainted with corn and cotton, with fruits and
flowers, but also to know the way in which they
grow, as well as something of the soil from which
they get their food, of the roots that secure it, the
leaves that digest it, and the fruit where the food is
so largely used.

And I particularly want you to learn these lessons
about plants very largely from the plants themselves.
Therefore this book is to be read and not studied, as
would be the case were it a geography or a spelling
book. I can tell you in the book a few things that
it is well to know, but the plant can tell you a great
many more things that are both interesting and use-
ful. I believe that the potato plant can tell boys
things that will almost make them enjoy hoeing
potatoes !

This work that we are to begin together is not
plant study merely, but a study of the growing plant ;
and our purpose is to learn to help the plants to grow
better, so that they may give us larger crops. To
do this we must learn something about soils as well
as about plants. We shall find that the same law of
life applies to plants as to animals and to man.
Like us, the plant grows best when it is fed best.

Strawberry plant.

Like us too, the plant is helpless when very young,
and becomes stronger and better able to take care
of itself as it grows older. Indeed, fruit trees are so
much like people that the German gardeners call
the place where young trees are grown a "tree-
school," and all the fruit trees have to spend a few
years there, learning how to grow.

And here is a question that I want to ask you :
What are the differences between plants and ani-
mals ? Vou say in reply, " Animals move from place
to place, and plants do not." Are you sure plants
do not move ? Before you decide, please learn all

you can from the strawberry plant. Then see if
the Bermuda grass stays in the spot where it is
planted. Maybe there is a good place for wild ferns
near your school. Find some " walking " ferns and
see whether they are not spreading out to new places.

Bermuda grass.

Are you quite sure plants do not move ? True, they
do not run like colts, but neither do snails run, and
in the nature books you will find stories of the coral
which never moves, and of the oyster, which spends
almost all its life in one spot. There are a great
many plants that move easily. The green plant
called pond scum moves readily through water, and
a host of other plants do the. same ; and then there

10

are all the little plants, so small that we cannot see
them, which float about in the air like dust.

You may say, " Animals eat food, and plants do
not." Let us see about that. We know that plants

Walking fern.

grow, because we see them get larger from week to
week and from year to year; but they cannot grow
without food. You may say that they cannot eat
without mouths ; but every plant has a great many
mouths covering all its young roots and much of its
leaf surface, and these mouths are no more curious
than those of many animals. The plant must have
its food just as surely as a cow or a horse.

II

Plants breathe in a way of their own, and, indeed,
they do almost everything that animals do. They
do not hear or talk, but you know there are even
people who are deaf and dumb; and plants have
their own way
of making their
wants known. Do
you know how a
plant tells that it
is thirsty? When
we have gone a
little farther, per-
haps we can see
how a plant says
that it is hungry.

I have seen
plants starve to
death, and I have
seen whole fields
of wheat so nearly
starved that the
poor plants only
grew half as high as well-fed wheat plants grow, and
many of their stalks were headless. Every plant in
the field did its very best to make well-filled heads,,
but they were too weak and starved ; so instead of a
big crop the farmer hardly got five bushels of grain

Thirsty corn plants.

12

to the acre. I wonder whether that farmer starved
his boys and girls as he did his wheat. Like all
other good plants the wheat plant gets its food from
the soil. The dodder and the mistletoe steal their
food from the plants on which they grow, but they
are thieves.

As plants depend on the soil for their food, we
may well begin our study where the plants begin to
grow.

13

II. ORIGIN OF SOILS

All of the land is called soil, down to the hard
rock which lies at a greater or less depth below the
surface. In some places the soil is very deep ; in
others it is only a few inches in depth ; while there
are small spots on the earth's surface where there is
no soil, but only bare rock. When we speak of soil
we usually have in mind only the surface layer,
which is darker-colored, more fertile, and more porous
than the subsoil. But the deep-lying clays are soil,
and the pure sands that are found along rivers and
often in layers under the surface are soils also, and
have a great influence on the fertility of the land.

Now, if this were a fairy story, I should begin with
" Once upon a time," and then tell you how, a great
many years ago, the whole earth was covered with
water, and in some way a little strip of soft rock was
raised here and there above the sea. And the waves
washed the rock, just as you may see the waves of a
river wash the shore, and little bits of rock and shells
were broken loose by the waves and carried by sea
currents to other places, where they settled, making
big sand bars, that .at last reached the top of the
water — just as sand bars are formed along our
creeks and rivers. And as the land was raised higher
the frosts cracked the rocks, and the lightning broke

14

them, and the rains beat upon them, forming streams
and rivers that washed the loose parts down to lower
places, grinding the broken stone and mixing it all
up. When plants grew on the earth they too were

Sand bar in creek.

swept down by the water and mixed with the broken
stone, which became finer and finer until some of
it was like dust.

In this fine earth, made of ground rock mixed
with leaves and twigs, worms and other small animals
lived, making burrows and still farther mixing the
earth which the water had ground. Finally all this
grinding and mixing and moving from one place to

IS

another made the rock into soil. Soil-making has
been going on since the world began, and soils are
being made to-day just as they were when the world
was young.

When it rains again see if you can find any road-
side stream that is not muddy. Why is not the
water in it clear ? Make a strong dam across such
a stream, and when the rain has ceased see what you
can find in your dam. Then go down to the creek
and see if the rain has made any changes along the
creek banks. Has it washed away soil in one place
and made a little bar in another? Well, that is soil
movement and soil-making.

The next time you dig worms to fish with, please
search very carefully for the holes the worms have
made in the soil, and you will be surprised to see
how many there are, and how they go in all di-
rections. Then remember how the roots of the
trees pass through the soil. Every worm hole, and
every dead root, is a place for water to. get through,
carrying tiny bits of surface soil to the subsoil and
thus changing it.

So we see that the soil is changing all the time,
and I suppose there are almost as many living
things in the ground as there are above ground, all
working on the soil, mixing and moving, and thus
making it over and over again.

i6

III. KINDS OF SOIL

There are three kinds of soil : clay, sand, and
loam. Clay is very fine soil, with more or less lime
and decayed plants and animals mixed with it.
Pure clay is so fine that when moist it can be molded
into many shapes, and when dry and burned these
will hold water. This is the way our dishes are
made. Most clay soils are impure, and do not hold
water like pure clay. All clay soils hold water much
better than sand, because the clay is much finer and
its parts stick closer together. Fine sand holds
water much better than coarse sand or, gravel.
Water passes readily through sandy soil, and slowly
through clay soil. If you will make a heap of stones,
each as large as your fist, and another heap of small
stones, a third of coarse sand, a fourth of fine sand,
and a fifth of clay, and then pour water on all
of them until they are wet through, you will see that
clay holds water best. The big stones will be per-
fectly dry long before the clay is dry. This is be-
cause the clay is made up of very tiny bits, which
are soft and cling together so that the water cannot
get away from them, while there are big holes be-
tween the big stones through which all the water
soon runs out. The sand is made of very hard bits
that have sharp edges, and there are also many fine

17

holes between the grains of sand, so that the water
runs through it readily. Thus we see that pure
clay holds water a long time and pure sand can-
not hold water. Now, if sand is mixed with clay
the soil thus made will hold water better than pure
sand and not so well as pure clay ; for the sharp
edges of the bits of sand will keep the fine bits of

Clay, loam, and sand molds (taken from flower pots).

clay wider apart and thus let the water through.
A mixture of sand and clay is called loam.

Very few plants can live in a soil like pure clay
in which water stands. Water cress and a few
other plants can do so. And very few plants thrive
in sand, because it holds so little water. The cac-
tus is about the only family of plants that likes such
very dry soil. But almost all plants do well in loam,
which is not so dry as sand nor so wet as clay. Of
course there are clay soils which have a little sand

18

in them, and sandy soils which have some clay, so
that all kinds of mixtures may be found : sandy
clays, clayey loams, loamy sands, clayey sands, etc.
In clays the parts of soil are so very fine that they
pack closely together, and when wet the spaces
between the little soil flakes are rilled with water,
and such soils contain little, if any, air. In sandy
soils the grains of sand are of all shapes and sizes,
so that they do not fit into one another. Such soils
have many spaces between the grains and when
they are quite moist, as in loams, the sharp sand
grainy separate the fine clay enough for air space,
so that loam soils contain more air than clay, though
less than sand. We shall find after a while that the
roots of plants must have air to do their work.

Our plants would have a hard time of it, however,
if the soils in which they grow contained nothing
but sand and clay. One might take sand or clay
and wash it until perfectly clean, then bake it in an
oven until perfectly dry, and then set plants in it,
giving them all the boiled water they wanted, yet
they would not live very long. This shows that
plants require something more in the soil than clay
and sand. Think how long the trees and weeds
and grasses have been covering the land with leaves
and stems, and how many animals have worked and
died in the soil. All of their bodies, as well as the

19

leaves and stems, decay and become a part of the
soil.

The animal and vegetable matter that decays in
the soil forms one of its most useful parts, called
humus. In the forest where the trees grow so thick
that the wind cannot blow the leaves away the humus
in time becomes a thick layer over the soil. This
is what makes the ground feel soft as we walk in
the woods.

It is the rarest thing to find a soil of pure sand or
pure clay, for everywhere there are a great many
things mixed with the sand or clay. There is al-
ways some iron and lime and there are other things
which the plants require for food. That is why we
seldom see a soil where no plants at all will grow.

20

IV. THE PLANT AND THE SOIL

While there are a few plants that
live in water without being fastened
to the soil, all the cultivated plants
are grown in soil. The roots of the
plant anchor it to its place so that it
cannot be destroyed by wind. Small
plants that do not rise high in the
air are in no danger from wind, and
yet they often have very large roots.
The clover, one of the most useful
of forage plants, often has roots over
ten feet deep, although it seldom has
stems over two feet high. So the
root must have some other use be-
sides that of holding the plant in
the soil.

In the spring, when growth first
begins, the wheat plant is much
smaller above ground than below —
its stem is smaller than its root. It
will take very careful work and a good
deal of digging to get all of the roots
of a strong winter-wheat plant in
early spring. And if we try to dig
Young wheat plant, up all the roots of a wheat plant

21

when it is in blossom we shall have to make a big
hole in the ground. But the wind does not blow
the wheat plant over ; it sometimes breaks the straw,
but the root holds the plant in place. Why should
the wheat plant have such a large root with so many
branches ?

If there are any woods near the schoolhouse, let
us see if we can find a tree that has blown down.
How deep into the ground do the roots grow ? I
have seen the roots of alfalfa plants go ten feet or
more into the soil ; and in a very dry knoll in Da-
kota I once took the trouble to dig out all the roots
of a box elder tree, the seed of which I had planted
twelve years before. The tree was little more than
twelve feet high — it would have grown much
taller in the same time in Tennessee — and it was
about ten feet in diameter of crown. A man helped
me and we were very careful not to cut any root,
following each one until it was no thicker than a fine
knitting needle. It took us two weeks to dig up
the tree in this way. And how far do you think the
roots had grown ? The deepest branch was traced
thirteen feet straight down, and the longest we fol-
lowed twenty-four feet from the collar — the place
where root and stem join — and it was then only
three feet below the surface. Most of the roots of
this tree were within two feet of the surface. If

22

we examine even large forest trees that are blown
down we may observe that they do not send their
roots very deep, most of the roots being within four
feet of the surface. Can any one tell why ?

Is the soil the same color all the way down ? And
why is there a difference ? I suppose if you and I

An uprooted forest tree.
(Reproduced by permission of the Forest Service, U. S. Department of Agriculture.)

were to use just the right things, we could take
some of the light-gray-colored subsoil, or some red
or yellow clay, and we could color them just like
the surface soil. If we take even a little rotten

23

wood from an old log, or some decayed grass and
weeds and leaves, and break them up fine and mix
them with the red or gray subsoil, we can change
its color and also change its water-holding power.
Let us try it.

But if instead of leaves we use well-rotted barn-
yard manure it will not only change the color of the
soil, but will make it richer and better for the growth
of plants. We can take soil- from a deep hole, like
that thrown out in digging a well, and if we mix
enough sand with it so as to make its water-holding
power like loam, and then add well-rotted manure,
we can grow plants in it quite as well as if we had
used surface soil.

Suppose there were a very hungry boy in this
school, whose mother, knowing him to be always
hungry, had put a piece of pie on every tenth fence
post from the schoolhouse to his home. No doubt
he would eat the nearest piece first ; but if some
other boy had eaten all the pie near the school-
house, or if the first boy were still hungry when he
reached his home, I dare say he would eat the pie
he found there also, just think what a host of plants
there are, and all hungry for the food the soil con-
tains. They grow most of their roots in the dark
surface soil because most of their food is there, but
they almost always send some roots deep down into

24

the subsoil, where there is apt to be more moisture.
Thus they are better able to stand a famine or a
drought.

The roots of plants adhere closely to the bits of
soil so they can absorb moisture from them. The
young roots are covered thickly with hairs, which
grow into the tiny spaces between the soil particles,
and press close to the soil to get its moisture. But
the old roots and the tips of the young roots have
no hairs. If you pull up a very young corn or
wheat plant the roots will be covered with soil.
What makes it stick, and why are the root tips
clean ?

25

V. LITTLE RIVERS UNDER THE GROUND

It rained all day long at the Fruit Farm one day
last January, and the next morning the sun was
shining when -I started to ride to school. As I
passed along a hillside road in the woods, the gutter

at the roadside was full of running water.

In grad-

A roadside rivulet after rain.

ing, the land on the higher side was cut down about
eighteen inches, and the dirt was thrown to the
lower side, so as to make the road level ; then a shal-
low ditch was made on the upper side. As I rode
along I noticed a great many little streams of water

26

gushing out of little holes in the bank that had
been made in grading. They were like springs,
and I thought they must come from underground
rivers. But where did all the water come from that
was pouring out of the bank ? What made the little
rivers under the ground?

The next day the little rivers were still flowing,
and the water was as clear as any spring. A few
days later the rivers were all dry, but I am sure
after the next rain they will flow again.

Let us talk about them a few minutes. How
many branches are there in the crown of a beech
tree ? The crown of a tree is the part above the
trunk, no matter how low the limbs may grow. If
they start at the ground the little tree is all crown.
And how many branches are there in the root of
the beech tree? It would be hard to answer either
of these questions, but every large tree has a great
many branches both above and below the surface
of the soil.

When next we go into the woods I want you to
find a big tree and try to count the number of dead
limbs in its crown, and the scars where limbs have
been. Many limbs, big and little, die every year.
The crown branches drop off when they die, and
the root branches decay, leaving a hole where they
grew.

2;

When the rain falls in the forest it does not pack
the soil as it does sometimes in fields, for the tree
tops break the force of the drops, and much of the
rain water follows down the limbs and trunk to the
ground. The forest floor is covered with a carpet

Leaves on the forest floor.

of decaying leaves, which absorbs the rain water.
As it sinks into the soil it finds the holes where
the dead roots once grew, and so instead of running
off over the surface of the land as would happen on
a hard road, the rain water in the forest makes little
underground rivers.

The water that follows the courses of dead roots

28

helps to make the subsoil richer by carrying down
small parts of the decayed leaves and twigs from the
surface: The air also passes freely into all the holes
in the soil, and this is very helpful to the roots of
plants.

Forest floor with carpet removed.

There are other channels for water and air besides,
those where roots once grew. All the animals that
make burrows in the soil help to form underground
rivers. The moles, gophers, woodchucks, mice,
and many other little creatures that are a pest to
farmer and woodsman help him a little in this way.
The fish worm makes a great many tiny channels

29

through which air and water pass 'freely, and it
is thus a great worker in deepening the soil and
making it richer.

Now, when a forest is all cut away, and the land
is turned into farms, many of the underground
rivers become dry, and the rain water runs over the
surface of the soil, washing it into gullies, unless the
farmer uses his land very carefully. Since the trees
are no longer there to put a coat of leaves on the
ground every year, the farmer should try to sup-
ply something in the place of leaves. He may plow
under crops of peas, grass, rye, or weeds — any kind
of plants that will decay in the soil will help to keep
open underground rivers. Or he may plow under
the manure from the stables and feeding lots, and
thus make the soil richer and keep the little rivers
flowing at the same time.

30

VI. WHAT THE FOREST DOES FOR THE
SOIL

Every plant does something to the soil in which
it grows. It takes something out of the soil and
gives something back to it. The soil is like a sav-
ings bank. Some people put in money every week,
and take out very little ; and the bank takes care
of the money and adds to it, so that the longer a
man leaves his money with the banker the .more he
gets. Then, some day he can take out more money
than he has put in, for the money itself has been
earning a little all the time, and this little is added
to the whole amount. Year by year the savings
increase. If a boy two years old were to begin now
and put one cent a day in the savings bank until
he came of age, he would have a hundred dollars,
provided he drew no money out.

Now, the forest is all the time taking a little
store from the soil, but it is every year putting more
into it than it takes out. All through the long
summer the roots of the trees are taking water from
the soil and carrying it up to the leaves.

The water is never pure, but always contains
certain things that the plants live upon. If you
drop a lump of sugar into water, the lump soon dis-
appears, but the water tastes sweet. The water has

3i

taken up the sugar. In the same way, while the
water is in the ground it takes up certain things
from the soil which it carries into the plant. We
think spring water pure, because it is clear, but
pure spring water contains all the food that plants
need.

The trees that grow in the forest where the wind
cannot blow the leaves away act just like other
plants — their roots absorb water from the soil, and
this water contains different things that the trees
must have for food ; but such very small portions
are dissolved in the water that it tastes pure to us f
Spring water contains a great many things, all
mixed together, and all necessary for the plants.
Here are some of the things contained in spring
water that plants must have in their food : oxygen,
hydrogen, nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, iron,
chlorine, calcium, magnesium. You need not learn
.these names. They are used here just to show
you how many different things spring water may
contain when we think it is perfectly pure.

The water that enters the plant thus carries food,
and the plant thrives on it, as we grow by what we
eat.

Every year the forest returns to the soil all the
leaves that grew during the season and a great
many twigs and limbs that have died from want of

32

light. Down in the ground a great many roots also
die every year. The forest covers the ground so
densely that the wind cannot blow the fallen leaves
away, and the shade of the trees keeps the ground
much more moist than it would be if the trees were

if

Section through leaves and surface soil to subsoil.

wide apart, as in an orchard. So the leaves, twigs,
and dead limbs lying on the moist soil soon decay,
and most of the matter they are made of burns up
and passes into the air. The burning is so very
slow that there is neither smoke nor flame. We
are apt to think that there can be no burning unless
there is fire, but the fact is that the change which

33

takes place in the dead leaves that fall from the
trees is a very slow burning. It takes several years
for a single crop of leaves to burn in this way ;
while a fire lighted to the leaves would burn
throughout the forest in a very few hours. But
such rapid burning leaves only ashes, and ashes do
not improve the soil so much as do leaves and twigs
and fruit, which rot slowly and become mixed with
the soil itself. We call the decaying wood and
leaves humus, and it is the best gift the forest can
make to the soil. It is a good plant food. It holds
water like a sponge. It lets air into the soil when
mixed with it. It prevents the rapid drying of the
soil. All these things are good for the plants that
the farmer grows, and so the forest helps not only
the soil but it helps the farmer also.

It takes a great many years for the humus to form
on the floor of the forest. Every leaf helps, but
each leaf is so small that all the leaves that grow in
fifty years or more are needed to make humus enough
to improve the soil of a field.

A farmer can supply as much plant food to the
soil, in the form of manure, in a single winter as a
forest might give in fifty years ; but a great many
farmers do not manure their fields at all. They
plant crops in the fields year after year, and the crops
yield less and less, until the soil does not produce

34

enough to pay for working it. Then the farmer
quits and lets nature care for the land.

What does nature do with an old field? By bad
work on the part of the farmer the loam has become
washed away and the clay subsoil shows here and
there in the field. The crops have taken so much
of the plant food out of the soil that even the weeds
do not grow well in it. But hardly any soil is too
poor for some kind of a weed to live in it, even
though the growth is poor.

So the first few years after a field is turned out
there is a growth of poor weeds, each one of which
is helping the soil a little. Every weed that grows,
no matter how bad it may be for our crops, earns its
right to live by doing what it can to make the soil
better; and in old fields, where nothing else will
grow, the weeds are very useful to the owner of the
land.

After a while there will appear among the weeds
a few woody plants, such as greenbrier, and black-
berry, and sassafras, and each one of these helps to
make the soil better not only by the fall and decay
of its own leaves but also by making lodging places
for the dead weed leaves, so that the wind cannot
blow them away.

If we go away for fifteen or twenty years, and then
return, we shall hardly know the old field, for it will

i *':-:

'J '

"'He

v i :

to

ID

IX
C

O

.c
w

T3

C
<

36

be covered over with young trees of many kinds.
Pine and cedar, tulip and ash, maple and cherry —
a great many trees will be found in the field, and
only in a few places can we see the bare soil. Al-
most everywhere the trees and bushes will cover
the land, and every one of them will be at work
making the land better by shedding its yearly crop

Sapling pines in abandoned field.

of leaves and twigs. All the time the trees will be
getting bigger and bigger. In fifty years quite
good-sized trees will stand in the field, making a
young forest ; and in a hundred years or more fine
timber can be cut from the old field, and the land

37

will be so rich that it will again produce good
crops.

But a hundred years is a long time to wait for the
forest to enrich our poor soil. The better way is
not to allow our crops to rob the soil. Let us every
year put just a little more plant food into the soil
than the crops take out. Then, if we look carefully
after a few other things, our fields will never be worn
out, but will become better year by year.

In the Middle West, where the forest only bor-
ders the streams, or where no trees grow, it takes
much longer for nature to restore fertility to a worn-
out field because there the ground cover is only
weeds and grasses, and humus forms very slowly.

3«

VII. THE ROBBER FARMER

Once upon a time there was a farmer who be-
came poorer and poorer until everything he had was
taken away from him to pay his debts. The crops
that this farmer grew were all robbers — they took
things from the soil and put nothing back. It was
not the fault of the crops, however, but of the farmer ;
and when at last he lost all his lands the fields were
not sorry, for the man that got them did not help
the crops to rob, and they began to get fertile again.

When the first farmer bought the land it was all
covered with forests, and the trees had made it rich.
The first thing he did was to cut all the trees and sell
them to the lumbermen. When he first plowed the
land it was full of tree roots, and it had a dark, rich
color. Part of the farm was level, but part of it was
very steep. The farmer cleared it all of trees and
planted corn, which he plowed and hoed. The corn
grew large and strong, for it had all the food it
wanted. The forest had greatly enriched the soil.

During the summer, whenever it rained, little
gullies would form, and the rain water would carry
the soil away, in places one or two feet wide and
three or four inches deep. In all the steep parts of
the field the rich top soil would thus be washed
away, and neither the corn plants nor the farmer

39

were helped by it. Some other farmer, who lived
down the slope or along the creek where the soil
was lodged by the stream, was made richer, and that
was all.

All summer long the corn grew and made a fine
crop. When the corn was ripe in the fall the farmer
cut all the stalks off close to the ground and shocked
them. When he had shucked all the ears and put
them into the corn crib he sold the fodder to a
neighbor to be fed to the stock during the winter.
The big field was left all bare ; so the winter rains
washed the rich top soil down the slopes; but the
farmer was thinking what a fine crop'he had made,
and he left the land to take care of itself.

The forest had not treated the land so badly. It
had taken a great deal of richness from the soil, but
in the fall, when the frost came, it had covered the
land all over with leaves. And in the winter many
dead twigs and branches dropped off the trees, and
many roots died in the ground. All these dead
leaves and twigs, branches and roots, the forest gave
back to the soil. But the corn plant could give
nothing ; since even its leaves and stalks had been
carried away.

The poor farmer planted other crops on this field
— wheat, oats, rye, corn — and every year he took
all the crop away. In a very few years the field did

40

not yield so well as it did at first. The tenth crop
of corn had only small stalks, and there were al-
most as many nubbins as good ears. The corn
plants were anxious to make just as big ears as the
first crop of corn had produced, but the plant food
in the soil had been used up or wasted.

What should you tell this farmer to do ? I
should tell him to go into the forest and learn the
lesson it teaches. The plant food in the soil which
he has carried away in the form of crops must be
replaced in the form of manures. The forest uses
leaves and roots and twigs and branches for manure
for the soil. What should the farmer use ?

41

VIII. WEEDS

What is a weed ? In one story it was said that if
the farmer plows under a heavy growth of weeds it
keeps the little rivers
in the soil open and
thus prevents the rain
from making gullies
in the fields. When
weeds are allowed to
grow high for this
purpose, they are use-
ful and may be called
a kind of crop. In-
deed, in the northwest,
where wheat is the
greatest crop, most
farmers allow weeds
to grow in the fields
instead of wheat, once
in four or five years,
on purpose to plow
under. They call the
weeds a fallow crop ;

and by plowing the land when the weeds are in
bloom they prevent weed growth the next year
and improve the texture of the soil.

v f .. f i

1 ■UHr'^Bfl ffl\$fflt\h ' ,

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raffr J

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G&tmjMktf&ffi ^^^S

-^^*tf»^^B S^FtP * tffcT^^ MlB^Bn

Corn cockle,, a weed of the wheatfield.

42

Morning glory, a weed of the meadow.

In Tennessee corn-
fields one often sees
a great many morn-
ing-glory vines, and
in the morning when
the flowers are all
open they are very
pretty. Is the morn-
ing-glory a weed ?
Two years ago I
grew some bachelor's
buttons in the gar-
den, and every visitor
admired their blue
flowers. The bache-
lor's button, like most
plants, has several
names. The Ger-
mans call it the corn
flower, and some
people call it ragged
robin. Last year I
planted other things
in that part of the gar-
den, but the bache-
lor's buttons had
sown their own seed

43

in the land, and it took a great deal of hoeing to
get rid of them. Were they weeds ?

Last year a corn plant came up in the rose garden,
and the gardener allowed it to stand. It was a weed,
just as truly as if it had been a purslane or a dog
fennel or a sour dock.

When the morning-glory grew in the cornfield it
was out of 'place, for the land was intended to pro-
duce a crop of corn. And when the corn plant
appeared in the rose garden it was equally out of
place, for it was the business of the garden to yield
a crop of roses.

A weed, then, is a plant that is growing where it
is not wanted. The dictionary tells us a weed is a
plant that is useless or troublesome; and some one
says a weed is a plant for which man has not found
a use. Let us think of all these meanings in trying
to find out what a weed is.

In a cornfield, the morning-glory is a weed, but it
is a flower to be cared for if planted where it will shade
the kitchen window, or the porch where the morn-
ing's work is done. It seems odd to call the useful
corn plant a weed, but there are a great many useful
things that become nuisances when out of place.

Every plant that comes up in a wheat field except
the wheat itself is a weed, and the same is true of
any other plant in any field devoted to a special

44

crop. The pastures and meadows are apt to have
many kinds of weeds, and all of them are much

safer among the
grasses than they
would be if grow-
ing among corn
plants. Why ?

The farmer
must keep up a
constant fight with
the weeds, or they
will use more of
the plant food in
the fields than his
crop can spare.
The fields ought
to be rich enough
to support the
crop and have
something left,
but it would be
foolish to give
what is left to the
weeds. And if it should happen that weeds
spring up in spite of the farmer's care, the best
thing to do with them is to plow them into the
soil, where by decaying they will help the land ;

Dock, a weed of the meadows.

45

only this should always be done before they go to
seed. When one plows ripe weeds under one really
sows a crop that is very hard to overcome.

Weeds are troublesome not only because they
take food from the soil but also water. Weeds
require water just as crops do, and in dry seasons,
particularly, the weeds should be kept out.

Some weeds are very aggressive, and if left to
themselves capture a field or a meadow in a single
season. But these are usually watched for by the
farmer, and he seldom lets them get a foothold. I
suppose that the sneaking kind of weeds that slip in
among the grasses in the meadow land, or hide
among the small grain, really cause the most loss,
for no one realizes how much they are taking from
the crop.

When the meadow gets very weedy it must be
plowed, and corn and other crops that need hoeing
must be planted in the field. Corn, cotton, tobacco,
potatoes, and vegetables are good crops to plant on
grass land, for the tillage they require is the very
thing necessary to kill the weeds.

The weeds could teach us many lessons, but
usually we are too busy killing them to study them
very much. If we study their habits we shall dis-
cover better ways of fighting them. A great many
farmers who try to kill weeds only succeed in trans-

4 6

planting them. I have seen men wait until the cool
of the evening to hoe the weeds in their gardens.
That was easy for the men, but had the weeds been
cut off just below the surface of the soil after the
dew had dried in the morning, they would not have
sprouted again after the next rain. I have also
seen boys hoeing in weedy gardens, where they

Ox-eye daisy, a weed of the meadows.

would cut off the weeds just above the ground, or
dig them up bodily by making deep gashes into
the ground. Neither is a good way. In the first
case buds near the ground are sure to grow, and in
the second a rain will set the plants to growing
again.

The best way to kill weeds by hoeing is to cut
just far enough below the surface of the soil to cut
through the root, and then turn the stem base up, so

4/

that it will wilt quickly. Deep hoeing often leaves
enough soil attached to the root above the cut to
enable the plant to grow. Hoe shallow, from one
half to one inch deep, and hoe every bit of the sur-
face. This will kill all the weeds, make a dust mulch
on the ground, and save the moisture in the soil for
the crop.

No single hoeing will kill all the weeds, for the
seeds do not all sprout at one time, and we no sooner
get rid of those that are big to-day than little ones
grow up which must be hoed next week.

For field work cultivators with many small teeth
are the best weed killers, but they can only be used
to advantage while the weeds are small. The weeds
in a corn crop should never be allowed to grow
until they are so big that a double shovel cultivator
is the only thing that can root them up. The corn-
field is best cultivated with a spike-tooth harrow
until the corn is at least four inches high.

Now, it would be a good thing for us to learn the
names of all the weeds we can, and make a collec-
tion of them in three sizes : in babyhood, in flower,
and in fruit. And let us be sure to get the roots as
well as the tops. In doing this I think we can find
out what the business of the weed is.

4 o

IX. WHAT THE RUSSIAN THISTLE DID

This is the story of a foreigner. There are a
great many foreigners in our fields, but most of
them have lived there so long that we can hardly
tell them from the natives. But this foreigner
made such a commotion in so short a time that she
was very much talked about. Most plants (we are
talking about plants, you know, not about people)
come into a new country very quietly, and some of
them slip in hidden among others. That is what
the thistle did.

Nobody wanted her. She was not liked in
Russia, but she was sly, and slipped into the wheat
fields and hid her seeds among the grain, and so
got into the grain sacks. Somebody bought a lot
of Russian wheat to plant in Dakota, and the thistle
was bought, too, though the buyer did not know it,
and everybody was sorry when the discovery was
made.

Now, the thistle had had a pretty hard time in
Russia, and she was glad to get away. She took
her place in the seeder as if she had a right there,
and she no sooner found herself in the ground than
she pushed her head above the surface and took a
look around. It was a fine country. There was
plenty of moisture and plenty of food, and she

49

enjoyed her life very much, growing fast and strong.
She was modest at first and nobody saw her.

A great many plants besides wheat grew in the
fields of Dakota. There was the mustard, which
had big leaves and bright yellow flowers. In some
fields there were so many mustard flowers that you
could not see the wheat — eighty acres of brilliant
yellow f And there were the fire weed and the
cockle, and many others. The farmers on the look-
out for these might be excused for not seeing a plant
whose leaves were less than half' an inch long, and
spine-shaped at that, and whose flowers were so
small that one had to search for them, hidden close
to the stem in the axils of the leaves.

So the Russian thistle grew unmolested, and it
happened that some plants escaped the reaper, and
they stood quietly until the end of the season, ripen-
ing their seed. Unlike the mustard, they did not
hasten to drop their seed and they each produced a
great many, for almost every leaf hid a flower, and
every flower produced a seed. But in the fall, when
the wind began to blow, the thistles were wrenched
loose, and began rolling over the fields before the
wind. As they jumped along over the plowed "land
the seeds were jolted out, but the thistle hated to
part with them, so she did not drop them all at once.
It took a great many jolts before they were all set

50

free, and the wind had carried the thistle several
miles, so that she sowed her seed over a big stretch
of country.

There were few fences in Dakota at that time,
and it is a level country, so the big, bushy thistles
rolled for miles and miles, scattering their seed as
they went. The next spring the farmers began to
notice a new weed in their wheatfields, and because
it had spiny leaves they called it a thistle, and soon,
when it was learned whence it came, it was given
the name of Russian thistle. As a matter of fact,
however, it is not even related to the thistle family,
but belongs to the pigweeds. And how it spread !
In a very few years it became worse than the mus-
tard, and the State passed a law against it.

For a few years the farmers were in a panic, and
then some one discovered that the foreigner could
not live in a field where the cultivator was kept
going, and the farmers really owe a vote of thanks
to the Russian thistle for forcing them to rotate
hoed crops with small grain.

5i

X. THE PLANT'S BUSINESS

I wonder why it is that so many men treat plants
as if they were not alive. It seems as if they never
thought about the life of the plant until they tried
to kill it. They know that horses, cattle, sheep, and
pigs are alive, and they give them a group name,
" live stock." No doubt they think of plants as
"dead stock." It would be no more foolish than to
treat the plants as many men do.

I like to think of plants, as I like to think of boys,
as always very much alive, every one with business
to attend to, and each doing his best at the work.
I think you will agree with me that the peach tree
and the apple tree have business of their own, and
when they give us fine crops of fruit we are glad
they have worked so well. And we are sure that
the corn plants and the cotton plants have done a
good summer's work when we gather good crops of
corn and cotton in the fall. But have not the cockle-
bur and the ragweed also attended to their business
during the entire season ?

Sometimes I think that man believes that all the
plants were made for him — that the business of
the plants is to be useful to man. But a great
many questions rush to my mind. If that is so,
why does he find so many of them useless ? Why

5- 7

does he use them in so few ways? And so we may
well study this question : What is the plant's busi-
ness ?

The boy that gathers hickory nuts enjoys the
exercise and likes the nuts. I wonder if it ever
occurs to him that there are other nut gatherers be-
sides himself, and
that the old hickory
tree thinks more of
them than of him ?
When I was a boy
we used to devote
a day ever)' year
to gathering wild
p 1 u m s. F a t h e r
and mother and
all of us children
would go up the
river several miles
in our boats, and
when the season
was good we would get all the plums we could use.
There were wild plum thickets which fruited freely.
Many plums were too poor to use, but some were
very fine. We all have gathered luscious black-
berries in the wood lots and pastures, and along
the roadside. Was it the business of hickory and

Blackberry in fruit.

S3

plum tree and blackberry bush to ripen their fruits
for us?

Away up in the Canada woods where the birch
tree is so common that men for-
get its beauty, when early spring
comes the air is full of tiny seeds
that come spinning on their
double wings to the earth ; and
if the wind catches them it car-
ries them far from the parent
tree, and may even land them
miles away. You may see the
same thing happen in the pines.
Then all of you know what
thistledown is ; and if you have
not made fairy balls of milk-
weed seed, all I can say is you
had better learn how, this very
summer. I have seen little girls
ask the head of the dandelion if
mother wanted them, by blow-
ing it three times, and if all of its hair was blown
off in three blows, home they went. Do you sup-
pose the business of the dandelion is to tell little
girls when their mothers want them? If not, why
do their heads have hair, all white and silky, that
blows away with a breath ?

Dandelion in fruit.

54

Then there are the burdocks and the cockle-
burs and the beggar's lice I have gone through
the woods in the fall and come out with my clothing

so covered with beg-
gar's lice that it al-
most seemed as if
the plants were angry
with me and had
made a half hour's
work necessary in
order to settle some
grudge. I wonder if
the burdock and the
cockle hate cows ?
Is it the business of
beggar's lice and bur-
dock to bother me
and the cows ?
If these are the duties of plants, I must say I like
the nut trees and the fruiting plants vastly better
than some others I have mentioned. But in going
through the mountains one sees thousands of nut
trees, and very few people, and who does not know
what vast quantities of berries go to waste every
year? Are the plants so wasteful as to produce nuts
and berries that are not used at all ?

I think we must find some other business for the

Burdock seed.

55

plants than being useful to man. They are useful
to us in a great many ways, but then, turn about is

Burdock,

fair play, and we are useful to such plants as be-
friend us. Indeed, I have seen cockleburs growing

56

in cornfields so happily that it almost made me
think their best friend was the farmer.

Besides we have already seen that plants are use-
ful to the soil as well as to man. The forest im-
proves the soil by giving to it every year a crop of
leaves and twigs. And in the prairies and the plains
the grasses help the soil in much the same way.
Furthermore the plants are as useful to animals and
birds as to men. Every animal that eats grass and
grain and fruit, and every bird that lives on seeds, is
dependent on the plants for food.

57
XI. BUDS AND SEEDS

If we have all decided what the plant's business
is we may find out something about the means
it uses in doing its work. All the plant has to
think about is how to make more plants of its
own kind, and it begins working with this end in
view very early. In order to have as many perfect
seeds as possible, while it is yet in flower, it does
what it can to attract insects, which help in making
its seeds perfect. The insects do a great deal of
work for the plants, but the plants pay them well.
They store perfume in their flowers, and what is
even better, they store honey there, to pay for the
insects' work.

But to me the strangest thing the plants do is to
hang out bright flags — red and white and yellow
and many other colors — to attract the insects' atten-
tion. You know the bees and flies have a great
many eyes, and they can see a long way. One of
them may be flying along for exercise, when he spies
the pink banner of a wild azalea, far across the
creek. He says to himself, " I did not know Miss
Azalea was awake yet, but I see her waving a flag,
and I will go over and visit her." And when he
reaches the azalea, that lovely flower has a dish of
the sweetest-smelling honey for him. No wonder

58

he is glad to work a little for her. Let us watch
along the road as we go home and see if we cannot
find insect visitors among the flowers. The weeds
are just as good friends of insects as the other plants.

Now, some plants do not care for the insects.
They get the breeze to do their work, and they do
not have to pay him, so they do not take the trouble
to hang out flags, nor store honey in their flowers.
All the plants of this kind save the material the
flags are made of to use in other ways. The wheat,
corn, grasses, and many of the trees have greenish-
colored flowers, because they do not need the help
of insects. But the clover and rape and cotton and
many vegetables brighten their flowers to call the
insects. And the wild rose is red and sweet, not
because we love it, but because it thus lures and
repays its insect visitors.

A little while after the flowers fade, a great many
seeds take their places on the plant. The plants
have almost as many kinds of seed and seed covers
as they have flowers. The apple plant covers its
seed with juicy flesh in a bright red skin, and it
gives the flesh and skin to you and me for carrying
its seeds out of the orchard and dropping them on
the ground. The wheat plant covers its seeds with
a strawy chaff that is troublesome to thresh off ;
and is of no use to us at all ; but the wheat plant

59

knows well that men like its seed to make flour
of, and will be sure to save enough to make more
wheat plants next year.

The nut trees know that squirrels and boys will
carry off most of their seed, but they also know
that squirrels
have short mem-
ories, and for-
get where they
have made their
storehouse. The
dogwoods feed
their berries to
the birds, which
carry the seed
away and drop
it to grow into
dosfwood trees. r . , .

o Dogwood berries.

Now I think
we can see why the beggar's lice and the cockle-
bur bother men and other animals that pass their
way. The maple and the elm drop their seeds
into the stream over which they love to grow, and
the willow and the poplar give theirs to the wind,
to carry where it will.

Have you thought what a lot of work the plants
Sfive men and birds and beasts and creeks and wind

6o

to do ? Men are not the only planters. I should
not be surprised if the birds plant more seed than
the farmers. All the sycamore and willow and

cottonwood trees
along our rivers
were planted by
the streams, while
the wind has helped
to plant the pin-
eries.

So you see the
plants have many
friends to call up-
on ; and the reason
they make them-
selves useful to us
is that we, in turn,
may help them to
increase in number
and in size, more than would be possible in their
wild state.

Every seed is a little plant that only needs heat
and moisture and air to help it push up a stem and
down a root, and there it is, alive and working, like
its parent plant. And every bud is a little plant
too, only it gets its moisture through the stem on
which it grows, and when it pushes, it makes a new

Beggar's lice.

6i

branch instead of a new plant. Many plants in-
crease in number from stem-buds as readily as from
seed-buds, and some few have ceased making seed
growing entirely from stem-buds. The potato,
sugar cane, and banana form few, if any, seeds.
The seedless raisin is made from a grape which
grows only from stem-buds. The tulip and most
other bulbs form very few seeds, but grow from
stem-buds.

So plants have two ways of making new plants —
by seeds and by buds. Can you mention some farm
and garden crops that are grown from seed, and
others from buds ?

62

XII. WHY DO WE PLOW?

Maybe I ought to ask why we see so many kinds
of plowing. When I see three big, strong horses
hitched to a good plow, going along at a brisk walk,

pulling hard, I
like to go over
into the field
and watch the
work. And if I
find a second
team, stronger
than the first,
following in the
furrow with a
subsoil plow, I
am sure that a good beginning is being made
toward a good crop. But when I see one little
horse hitched to a little plow, I am just as sure
that if, the crop turns out good it will be not
because of, but in spite of, the plowing.

The little plow hardly turns a furrow more than
three inches deep. The man behind it is not care-
ful to make his furrows straight and even, and often
there are little unplowed spaces left. There is very
little good in this kind of plowing. It leaves the
top soil almost where it was before, and it does not

A plow at work.

63

loosen the lower soil. The only help it is to the
farmer is that he gets enough loose earth by that
kind of plowing to cover the seed when he puts in
his crop.

The man with the big plow and the subsoiler does
a great deal more than this. His surface plow is
turning a furrow
ten inches deep,
and when the fur-
row is finished
the top soil is at
the bottom of the
last furrow and
the earth is
crumbled loose
all the way
through. The
subsoiler follow-
ing loosens the earth six inches deeper, without
moving it from its place. When the field is done,
the earth has been stirred to a depth of sixteen
inches, and it is loose, so that the air goes through
it almost as freely as it passes over its surface.
Why do we plow?

I think a little observation just after a rain will
tell us one reason why. The rain comes down on
the pike road, the roadside, the meadow, and the

A subsoil plow.

6 4

field ; the water quickly disappears from the newly
plowed field, and it takes a long, hard rain to make
little streams on its surface. The meadow does not
soak up the rain as fast as the plowed land, but the

Poor plowing.

water does not stand on the surface there as it does
in the dirt road ; while on a hard pike it takes but
a very little shower to leave pools of water in the
ruts. The dirt road has been packed by travel un-
til it too is very hard. The meadow, with its thin
covering of grass, has protected the soil from pack-
ing and baking, but it is not so loose as the plowed
land, in which, if the work was well done, the earth

u 3

has been crumbled to a depth of ten inches or
more.

When well plowed, then, the soil will absorb a
great deal more rain water, and will allow much less
to run off in surface streams, than is the case in land
that is not plowed. Shallow plowing does but little

Plows.

good, because it does not make a deep enough layer
of loose soil, and often the soil loosened in shallow
plowing is carried away by heavy rains.

In times of drought the land becomes hard as
well as dry, and does not so readily absorb the rain
as when it is loose. Deep-plowed land can be kept
more open than land plowed shallow, and so resists
droughts better,
s

DO

The rain that is absorbed by the surface layer of
plowed land sinks in the air spaces of the subsoil.
If the field has been subsoil-plowed the subsoil is
loose and open, letting the water sink easily into the
lower depths, where it finds pathways made by dead
roots and earthworms, and thus it gets deep into the
ground, and is all saved to the field.

The best time to plow depends not so much on
the season of the year as on the condition of the
soil. If the ground is very dry, as is often the case
in September, the soil will not crumble when turned,
but will break into large clods, in which condition
it will not absorb the rain easily. On the other
hand, especially in clay soil, if the land is plowed
when too wet, it will at first be sticky, and when
dry will be very hard, making it almost impossible
to fine it down with disks or harrows. Often land
plowed when too wet remains in bad condition
throughout the season. The best condition of the
soil for plowing is when it is dry on the surface and
fresh below. It will then crumble under the plow,
and can be perfectly turned, and is easily fined with
the disk harrow and the spike-tooth harrow.

Whenever stubble land is to be plowed the sooner
it. can be done after the harvest the better. The
land should be so well turned that all the stubble is
covered." This can be done by taking narrow, regu-

6;

lar furrows. The summer rains will help rot the
straw in the ground, and when well-rotted the straw
turns into manure, like the forest leaves. It adds very
little to the richness of the land, but makes clay
easier to work, by keeping the soil particles from
running together. For the same reason it is a good
plan to plow under the weeds, grass, cowpeas, or any
other green crop.

When through overcropping land has become
very poor, cowpeas, crimson clover, or other plants
of a similar nature, are often sown for the special
purpose of plowing them under as a fertilizer.

68

XIII. GIVE THE CROPS PLENTY TO EAT

Healthy plants are like healthy boys and girls —
always hungry. And when you have thousands of
corn plants in one field you may be sure that they
will need a great deal of food. Feeding a corn
plant and feeding a boy are two very different
things, because the plant and the boy do not eat in
the same way. The boy must have his food pre-
pared, and he wants it at least three times a day.
If the farmer had to feed a meal to each corn plant
three times a day, what a task he would have ! But
the farmer only places food for his corn crop once
in the whole year. And sometimes he forgets or
neglects to do even that, and then the poor corn
plants have a hard time, and yield only nubbins
instead of good, big ears.

We feed our crops when we fertilize the land in
which they grow. Some farmers use barnyard
manure to fertilize their fields, and some buy
fertilizers. When the manure is carefully handled
it is not only a good plant food, but it improves the
soil as the forest leaves do, and the green crops that
are plowed under. When the fertilizers are bought
it is more important to plow under cover crops than
when barnyard manure is used.

The plants need a good many kinds of food, but

6 9

there is always plenty of almost all kinds in the
soil. The three kinds of plant food that must be
bought are nitrogen, phosphoric acid, and potash.
These can be bought already mixed, or they can be
had separately. Barnyard manure contains all of
them, but if we want to buy nitrogen for plants, we
get it in the form of nitrate of soda or cotton-seed
meal. If we
want phosphoric
acid, we buy acid
phosphate or
ground bone,
and if we want
potash, we get
muriate or sul-
phate of potash
or wood ashes.
There are many

other fertilizers besides these, which contain more
or less nitrogen, phosphoric acid, and potash. These
things are to the plant what meat and bread and
vegetables are to boys and girls — they are the
food by which the plants grow. It is not neces-
sary to remember their names, but we must remem-
ber that the plant cannot live without them.

When we want to make our pigs and cattle grow
well we feed them all they will eat; and we must

Sweet potatoes in sacks, showing effect of
manures.

7o

have the soil rich in plant food to make the plants
grow well. The plants take a good deal of their
food from the air, but we cannot control that —

there is always
plenty of the air
food.

When we
plant corn we
expect a crop of
grain. The plant
is just as anxious
to make a crop
as we are. The
plant's business
in life is to pro-
duce seeds, and
scatter them
widely. Every
grain of corn is a seed that contains a tiny bud
and a great deal of stored food for the bud to use
in growinsf until it can make roots and leaves.
And every bit of the stored food in the seed must
be taken by the plant from the soil and the air.
If there is plenty of food the plant will make big,
plump grains of corn, and full ears; but if there
is so little food that the plant is almost starved,
it cannot do its work of seed-making any more than

Well-fed corn plants.

n

a starving man could do his work, whatever it
might be.

But I can think of plants standing in rich soil and
starving to death, just as I can think of people

Small plant starved : it grew near a roadside tree. Large plant well fed;
from center of same field.

who are sick and cannot eat, though they have
plenty of food. To use its food, the plant must
have good roots and good leaves. The plants live
entirely on liquid diet — they eat nothing but soup !
And the soup they eat is water just as it comes in

72

the ground, with the things that are dissolved in
it.

When the rain is soaked into the soil, it takes up
all the plant food it can — nitrogen and phosphoric
acid and potash and a great many other things.

Well-fed cowpeas.

But all of them put together are not enough to give
the water any taste ; it is like pure spring water.
If there is plenty of fertilizer in the soil, though,
enough of it will dissolve in the water to feed the
crops well.

Now, the soil that is best for plants must contain
air as well as water. The very best condition is to
have each grain of soil covered with a film of water,

73

and wherever the grains are a little large, the spaces
between them will be filled with air. In this condi-
tion the roots grow readily, pushing themselves
between the soil particles, and using both the air
and the water in the soil. But in wet soil the air
spaces have been filled with water, and the roots

Starved cowpeas.

cannot work without air. They may thus stand in
xich soil and starve to death. Whenever a corn-
field is flooded, the leaves turn yellow, and that is a
way the plants have of telling us they are starving
for air at the root.

So, too, in times of severe drought there may be
plenty of food, but there is not water enough to take
it into the plant.

See how very much like people the plants are !

74

XIV. SOWING THE SEED

I wonder how many seeds the plants sow every
year. I am sure that the ox-eye daisy alone sows
millions and millions ; and when I think of all the
flowers, and the grasses, and the weeds, and the
trees, and the farm and garden crops, there must be
more seed sown every year than there are coins for
all the money in the world.

If you could count the seeds that ripen on a
single radish plant, you would have a big job, for I
dare say there are hundreds. And if the radish is
let alone it will sow every seed it has. But it would
not plant them as the gardener would. The radish
plant can not plow and harrow and put its seeds in
a drill ; it must simply drop them from its pods, and
then leave them for nature to take care of.

We' have found in a previous story what strange
ways some plants have of getting their seed spread
abroad. Wheat and corn and the vegetables are
lucky enough to be very useful to man, and need
not depend on wind and beasts and water to carry
their seeds away and plant them. But none of the
wild plants expect help from man. And so, in order
that each plant may have at least one of its seeds to
grow, it sows hundreds in the hope that one may fall
in a good place and get a chance to live.

75

The wild plants sow millions and millions of seed:
every year, and most of these fail to sprout. O
those that grow, very few live- to bear seed. Thii
spring, on May 6, I found one hundred and seventy
three little cherry trees just started from the seed
on one square foot of land beneath a wild cherry
and there were a great many other plants growing
with them on that one square foot of land — ox
eye daisies, plantains, wild lettuce, several kind;
of grasses, and other weeds. How many of these
cherry trees do you think will live to bear fruit i

Now, if each of the little seedling plants had beer
given enough room to grow in and plenty of food
all might have lived to bear seed. That is gooc
farming : to give each plant plenty of food, and the
right surroundings, and room enough, so that it ma)
grow as large and strong as it will.

Although the plants themselves do not sort then
seed, we do it for them. Instead of planting everj
grain of wheat, as it comes from the threshing
machine, we plant only the plumpest grains. The
big grains contain more stored food than the smal'
or shriveled grains, and the little plant in the big
grain will have the best start, and usually it wil!
make more and better seed than the small grains.

But the little plants, as soon as they come up
must have room for their leaves to spread out tc

76

Wheat — big and little grains.

the light, and for their roots to grow in. So if we
sow the seed thick we must soon thin the plants

by taking part of
them out.

Why do we
transplant toma-
toes and cab-
bage, and why
do we not trans-
plant wheat and
oats?

Suppose a farmer were to sow five bushels of
good wheat to the acre, instead of five pecks, which
is enough for a good crop if the soil is the right
kind and in good condition, fie would use four
times as much seed. Would he get four times as
large a yield ?

When we sow corn for ensilage we drill the seed in
rows, so the plants stand about six inches apart in
rows three and one half feet apart ; and the crop is
a great yield of leaves and stalks, but are there
many large ears?

You see, then, that a great deal depends upon
getting the right amount of seed for a crop into
the ground. We must sow the best amount of the
best seed, at the best time, in the best way.
What are these four bests for wheat ?

77

The plants do not cover their seed with soil, but
we must do it for them. Many plants try their best
to cover their seeds with leaves, but the wind blows
the leaves away and the seeds are left to dry.

We know that the seed must have moisture to
sprout, so we cover the seed with soil and pack the
earth firmly upon it. If the seed is sown too deep,
the food it contains will not last long enough for the
little sprout to reach the surface, and it will die.

I once planted some wheat grains in blotting
paper and they taught me some things that every
farmer should know. Ask the teacher to show you
how to make a blotting paper garden.

Some farmers sow wheat broadcast and harrow it
in. Others sow it with a press drill. Which is the
better way?

We know that the seed must have air as well as
moisture in order to sprout." Now, if the land is
wet, all the spaces in it are filled with water, and so
we should never plant seed in wet soil. But if the
land is dust-dry, while it contains plenty of air it has
not enough moisture for the seed to sprout. So the
soil should be neither wet nor dry, but just between,
when we call it fresh.

78

XV. ROUND AND ROUND THE FARM

Let us make a picture of a farm on the black-
board. In the center we shall mark off five acres
for home, garden, and feeding lots. Then we shall
make a line each way from the middle of one side,
passing through the home lot and reaching to the
center of the opposite side. We shall thus divide
the farm into four fields, which we may call A, B, C,
and D.

Now I want you to help me drive the crops from
one field to another in regular order, round and
round the farm. It does not make any difference
how we start, but there is a best way of arranging
our procession. If this year we have small grain
in A, corn in B, pasture in C, and meadow in D,
next year there should be meadow in A, small grain
in B, corn in C, and pasture in D. In the third year
there should be pasture in A, meadow in B, small
grain in C, and corn in D. In the fourth year
there should be corn in A, pasture in B, meadow
in C, and small grain in D, and this will complete
the first' round. The fifth year the fields should be
used as they were when the rotation began.

Just at first, it seems as if it were a good deal of
trouble to change the crops from field to field every
year; it would be much less bother to plant corn in

79

the same field ten years in succession. And when
a field is seeded to grass, which grows well for
several years without being disturbed, why should
we leave it in grass only two years at a time — the
first year for hay and the second for pasture ?

I know two boys whose home life is very different.
One has meat and bread and butter and potatoes,
every meal, and nothing else to eat. He gets tired
of having nothing but meat and bread and butter
and potatoes, and often his stomach gets out of
order. He is not a very strong boy, and I am afraid
it is because of the sameness of his diet.

The other, boy never knows what his next meal is
to be, for his mother gives him vegetables and fruits
and eggs, as well as meat and bread and butter and
potatoes. He does not have any more food than the
first boy, but there are so many kinds of food that
he does not tire of it, and he is strong and healthy.

We do not all relish exactly the same food, nor do
we use the same amounts of each kind. It is very
much the same with the plants. It may be that
the hay crop does not take the same amount of
nitrogen that the corn crop needs, and when the
pasture is plowed under it makes the soil quite
different from what it is when the corn stubble is
turned, because there is such a mass of grass tops to
rot in the soil.

8o

If instead of grass we use cowpeas for a hay crop,
while it is true we must sow the seed each year, yet
they make a very heavy forage crop, and they enrich
the land merely by growing in it. Neither corn nor
other hoed crops can do this, but the clovers and
cowpeas, soja beans, velvet beans, and the pod-bear-
ing plants generally, take nitrogen from the air as
well as from the soil. Nitrogen is the most expen-
sive of all fertilizers ; and where clover or alfalfa or
cowpeas are grown, all the nitrogen that is stored in
the stems and roots of the plants at the time the
land is plowed becomes food for the next crop.

You will notice that I let corn follow- pasture, and
if the pasture is of clover or peas, the corn will get
all the nitrogen their roots and stems contained.
The corn is a very greedy plant and sends its roots
far and deep in search of food. Clover and alfalfa
are even deeper-rooted than the corn, and they thus
prepare the land better for corn than any other
crops can. In the same way the corn, by its deep
rooting, puts the soil in good condition for small
grain. The grasses like a firm seed-bed, and may
be sown with small grain, growing in the shade of
the grain crop until it is harvested. So you see there
are good reasons for deciding the order of the
plants in the rotation. If potatoes, cotton, or other
crops that requires cultivating, are to be grown, they

8i

should be given a place with corn, and of course all
kinds of small grain may be grown in the same
field.

One of the most helpful things in a rotation is the
year that the field is in pasture. The animals drop
manure all over the field, and when the pasture is
turned under, the manure adds to the fertility of the
land. By this plan, every field of the farm is fer-
tilized by a manure which both enriches the land
and improves its texture. The use of a field for
pasturage one year in four does not mean that no
fertilizers will.be needed.. The small grain crop
should have a dressing of fertilizer, and if the land
is poor, a good dressing should be spread on the
pasture before it is turned under for corn.

But the lesson to be remembered is that it is best
for all crops to move from field to field, round and
round the farm, in regular order; corn, grain, grass,
pasture, over and over again.

82

XVI. STIRRING THE SOIL

There are a great many boys who believe that the
only reason why we cultivate the cornfield is to kill
weeds, and so keep the food that is in the soil for
the corn plants.

But I have seen cornfields that were badly in need
of cultivation in which very few weeds were growing.
We cultivate, or stir the soil, in many ways, and
always our chief reason has something to do with
the moisture of the soil. Sometimes when the land
is too wet, we stir the soil deeply to help dry it out.
When it is swampy, it may even be necessary to
ditch it, or put tile drains under the surface.

As a rule, however, we stir the soil to help it
absorb and hold moisture. I have told you that
plowing, which is one form of stirring the soil, if
well done, helps the land to absorb a great deal more
rain water than is taken in by unplowed land. All
the little open spaces in the plowed land fill up with
water before any begins to run off the surface.
Within a short time most of this water seeps into
the lower soil. The land gradually dries, because
the air is drier than the soil, and water passes from
the land into the air exactly as it passes from water.
If you fill a shallow pan with water and set it in the
sun, in a few days it will all have disappeared. But

83

if you put a board over it, the water will last a long
time.

You know that the rain comes from clouds, which
are made principally of water that has been absorbed
by the air from the sea. But all the time the air is
also absorbing water from the land. First the top

Implements for stirring the soil.

soil becomes dry, and then in times of drought the
subsoil to a good depth may lose nearly all its water
into the air.

But if you cover fresh soil with a deep layer of
straw or leaves, it remains damp much longer than
uncovered soil. And I want you to see, if the road
is dry when you go home to-night, whether the
cultivated land in the cornfield is equally dry.
In some parts of the country, where they have

84

plenty of straw, farmers plant their potatoes on the
surface, or barely cover them, then cover over the
entire field with straw. The potato tops grow up
through the straw, which mulches the land, keeping
it moist, and 'the potatoes form between the soil and
the straw. When they are ripe they are perfectly
clean, and the more easily gathered because they
are grown on top of the soil instead of under the
surface.

But we can not have straw and leaves enough to
make a good mulch over a big field, so we try to
make a mulch of the soil itself. We call it a dust
mulch, and we make it by running a fine-tooth culti-
vator through the soil to a depth of about two
inches. This lets the air in, and fines the earth so
that it dries out quickly, making a dust.

Many farmers go over their corn and small grain
two or three times with spike-tooth harrows, or with
wire-weeders, when the young plants are first up,
killing a great many weeds, and at the same time
covering the land with a dust mulch that prevents
the moisture from getting out into the air.

I have told you that the soil is made up of a great
many very small bits, each covered with a thin film
of water. The dry air absorbs the moisture from
the topmost soil particles, and then takes the mois-
ture from the ones below, and very soon the layer of

85

soil in which the roots of the corn are growing is
dried out. Now, if we can put a layer of dust
between the corn roots and the dry air, it will check

Making a dust mulch (weeder at work).

the drying out of the soil exactly as a layer of leaves
or straw would.

We cultivate our crops to keep the surface as
near dust as possible in dry weather. There is a
great deal more need of cultivating in dry weather,
for it is then necessary to save all the moisture the
land contains for the crop. By simply keeping the
cultivator going, crops have been saved from drought.

86

Single and double shovel cultivators are the poorest
implements that can be used for this work, for they
ridge the surface, causing it to dry more rapidly
than a smooth surface, which is formed by using
wire weeders and spike-tooth cultivators.

If weeds get a good start in the field, the fine-
toothed machines are not so good for rooting them
up as the larger ones, but the regular use of fine-
toothed cultivators prevents the weeds from getting
a start and so saves both the food and water the
weeds would use for the crop.

Stirring the soil permits the air to pass into it
freely and thus helps the plants to grow, for the
roots of plants need air in their work. Changes
take place in the soil when the air goes through it
freely, making it richer in plant food.

So a very large part of the work of the farmer is.
plowing and cultivating and hoeing — stirring the
soil.

87

XVII. THE HOED CROPS

When you read the title of this story I wonder
how many of you will know what is meant by hoed
crops. We hoe cabbage and tomatoes. Do we hoe
wheat and peas? Do we hoe the grasses? The
gardener and the farmer give different meanings to
the word hoe. To the gardener it means stirring
the soil around vegetables. All the boys know
what a hoe is, and most boys dislike it, for some-
how the garden always needs hoeing just when
there are so many other things to be done — pleas-
ant things, like fishing and hunting and swimming.

The market gardener uses a wheel-hoe instead of
a wooden-handled hoe, and by pushing it ahead of
him he can stir the soil as fast as he can walk. It
is a splendid machine, and one can do more and
better work with it among many plants than can be
done with a common hoe.

In large market gardens there are horse-hoes,
•cultivators with five, seven, nine, or more teeth,
which are movable and can be arranged to do deep
or shallow work.

Of course more work can be done with the horse-
hoe than with the wheel-hoe. The next machine
for hoeing is a farmer's implement, the double culti-
vator, which straddles a row of corn, is pulled by two

88

horses, and has spring teeth, or shovels. With this
the farmer can hoe several acres in a. day.

So we see that every kind of crop that needs to
have the soil cultivated while it is growing, is called
a hoed crop. Corn, cotton, tobacco, and sorghum, as

A wheel hoe.

well as beans, peas, melons, onions, radish, and cab-l
bage, are hoed crops.

There are many things which all kinds of hoed
crops need alike, and that is why we find ourselves
talking about corn and cabbage in the same story.

All the hoed crops do best in land that has been
well fertilized, well drained, and well plowed. They

8 9

all need a great deal more hoeing in the early part
of the season than later on. When the plants first
come up in the spring, the soil is not so warm as it
becomes later; but hoeing the soil lets the air in and
warms it, and air and warmth make the little plants
grow faster. Then, as you know, all the weeds have
sown their seed in the fields before the farmer puts
in corn or cotton, and it almost always happens that
the weeds start before the crops do. Hoeing kills
the weeds, but one cut of the hoe will kill hundreds
of weeds in April which by June would require a
sharp stroke each ; and in the meantime the weeds
would have robbed the crop of a good deal of food.

By giving the crops a good start, we help them to
form big roots, which are their food-gatherers, and
big leaves, where their food is digested. All that
corn and cotton put into ear and boll is gathered by
roots and digested in leaves. So the first thing is to
make them strong.

After the plants have reached full size, no hoeing
is done. Maybe you think the farmer lays by his
corn because it is too big to cultivate, but that is not
the reason; for he might make the rows farther apart,
and then he could plow until the corn is ripe. The
real reason is because it is time for the corn to stop
growing so fast and begin to form ears. The corn
seems to like to grow just as tall as it can. In Okla-

90

homa, for example, it grows twelve feet high, while
in Minnesota, where the summer is much shorter,
and all the nights are cool, it seldom gets more than
eight feet high. But after all, what the farmer
wants is well-filled ears, and not a long stalk. So
the sooner he can get his corn to turn its attention
to making seed, the better.

It is much the same with the other crops. Get
them to grow well and strong during the first part
of the season, and they will make more and better
seeds afterward. The sweet potato sometimes makes
such a great top growth that it seems to forget to
thicken up its roots, and the farmers say it " runs all
to top." When this happens, it is a good plan to
twist the stems just above the ground until the juice
starts from them. This will remind them of their
work, and they will begin making potatoes instead of
long stems.

You know, when the tobacco plant is in bud or
flower, the entire flower cluster is cut off, so that the
food which would go into the seed passes largely into
the leaf, making it more perfect. But before the
sweet potatoes are twisted, or the tobacco is topped,
while the plants are still young, they are hoed often
and thoroughly, and made to grow well. When their
roots and leaves are well formed, and flowering be-
gins, the hoeing is stopped so as to check stem

9 i

growth, for this always results in making more and
better seed.

I used to have a teacher who told us that when
the plants were in flower anything that checked
their growth made them fear that they might die,
so they hurried all they could with their work. Do
you remember what the plant's business is ?

Hoeing makes the plants grow better, by warming
the soil, saving the moisture in the soil, letting air
into the soil for the roots, and killing the robber
weeds.

All the crops that pay better for the extra work of
hoeing are called hoed crops. All the work that is
done on the soil after the crops are up is some form
of hoeing.

9 2

XVIII. THE CEREALS

The small grains — wheat, oats, rye, and barley —
are called cereals, and they grow so much alike that
we can treat them in the same way. In the
Southern and Eastern states wheat is planted in
the fall, and the crop is harvested the following
summer, but in the north-west all the seed is
sown in the spring, and the harvest is in August.

The cultivation of the cereals is best done before
the seed is sown. That may seem strange to you,
but let us think about it a minute.

Wheat and oats cover the ground so closely, even
when sown with a press drill, that if we used a culti-
vator in the wheatfield, we would tear up at least two
thirds of the plants,-and that would never do. In
Germany they sometimes sow wheat in drills wide
enough apart to allow hoeing by hand, but the work
is done by old women who get very little pay. If
we were to sow wheat in wide drills, there would be
danger of its being blown down by the wind. If it
grew well, each plant would yield more grain than
under our present method, but the whole field would
give little, if any, more, and the cost of cultivation
would be much greater.

As we grow them, the cereals come up so thick
that they smother out a good many weeds, but the

93

farmer must try to get all the weeds killed before
he sows the grain. If plowing is done early, a great
many weeds will sprout soon after the land is plowed ;
and if the land can be harrowed twice before the
seed is drilled in, a host of weeds will be killed.

The cereals like a firm seed bed. If the land is
dry when plowed, it will need disking and rolling
and harrowing to make it fine and firm for the seed.
If the land has been in corn or an ensilage crop,
which has been given clean cultivation, the farmer
sometimes disks the field without plowing and then
drills in the seed. In this way he gets a firm seed
bed, and if the land is rich and clean this is a good
plan. One advantage of sowing small grain on
corn land is that the cultivation necessary to make
a good corn crop has killed the weeds, so that much
of the work for the grain crop is done while the corn
is growing.

All the old picture books show us a picture of the
farmer with a sack of seed slung from his shoulder,
walking across a plowed field, sowing the seed by
hand. But a much better way is to plant with a
press drill, which sows the seed in regular rows and
presses the soil firmly upon it, so that it will sprout
quickly and from the first make a good growth.
Broadcast sowing must be covered with a harrow,
which neither covers the seed evenly nor firmly

94

presses the soil upon it. The drill is made so
that fertilizers can be sown with the grain. Grass
or clover can also be sown, and the machine meas-
ures exactly the amount of seed that is sown per
acre.

Often the small grain is harrowed and rolled after
it is up, but when the plants have tillered, nothing
more can be done for them ; the last harrowing is
the last hoeing they will get. During the winter,
the small grains may be grazed lightly without harm,
and rye is often sown purposely for winter pasture.

In the spring, especially if frost has raised the
plants, a good rolling will help them, and thereafter
the field must be left until harvest time.

The farmer can not control the weather, and
much of his success with cereals depends upon the
moisture content of the soil and the weather. But
there are things which he can do that will help to
make a good yield. He can run his seed wheat
through sieves that will separate the large from the
small grains, and use only the large grains for plant-
ing. He can soak the seed grain in blue vitriol for
a short time, then spread it to dry, before sowing,
and thus prevent smut in the crop. He can sow
late rather than early, and thus lessen the danger
from the Hessian fly. He can enrich the soil, and
have it in perfect condition at the time of seeding.

95

XIX. IN THE MEADOW

There was once a grass plant that found itself in
the midst of a meadow, and it thought it would like
to know all about its neighbors. They were a very
quiet company
and the grass
plant had no help
from them. In
fact, it seemed as
if every plant in
that field was
doing its very
best to crowd
the other plants.
Our plant was
of the Orchard-
Grass family,
and when it first
peeped out from

the soil it had plenty of room. True, there were a
host of other little grasses there, but they were all
so tiny that nobody was crowded.

They were happy too. Big stems of wheat
towered above them, and they liked the cool spring-
time. As May passed, the shade of the wheat plants
was very pleasant, for some days were too warm for

Orchard-Grass.

9 6

the grasses. But one day in June a noisy monster
swept over the little grasses, carrying with it the

forest of wheat. Only

the stubble remained,
and it made hardly any
shade.

But our little grass
was strong enough by
this time to stand the
full sun, and it grew
faster than before.
When it first came up
it showed a single erect
stem, that soon bore a
straight, narrow leaf.
But after a few months,
it began to send out
little side shoots, and
before long the Or-
chard-Grass found it-
self rubbing against
another grass plant.
Then it began to think
of its neighbor.
All the other grass plants had been doing the
same thing, though most of them did not grow as
fast as the Orchard-Grass, The Timothy was a

Timothy.

97

strong youngster, but the Red-Top was very delicate
and had hardly thought of branching when it found
itself in the way of the Orchard-Grass. The Tall
Meadow Oat-Grass and the Italian Rye-Grass were
there, but they did not hap-
pen to be near our friend.
And a little Fescue that
had slipped in without being
caught waited breathlessly
to see if the others were
going to put it out of the
field.

The Orchard-Grass did
not stop growing while it
was thinking of its neigh-
bors. It was almost the
strongest plant in the field,
and it pushed a shoot right
over the Red-Top, which
had to bend its back so long
that it became a cripple for
the rest of its life. The
Timothy on the other side
was more stubborn and it

pushed its own shoots among those of the Orchard-
Grass until they were pretty well mixed up.

The Orchard-Grass was quietly watching the
7

Red-Top.

98

struggle for room that was going on among several
other grasses near by, which became so mixed up
that the farmer himself could not tell which was
which. Here and there in the field a Red Clover
grew. It had a deep, strong root that helped it

Meadow grasses.

greatly, so that it was not afraid of being overrun
by any of the grasses.

As week after week passed, the grasses crowded
each other more and more, and soon their stems
were so laced that hardly a plant was growing free.
Of course none of the plants grew as strong as they
would have grown with plenty of room — even the

99

Orchard-Grass sent up finer flower stalks than it
would have produced if it could have had all the
room it wanted. But the farmer was rather glad
when he saw his whole meadow so well covered
that not a bit of soil could be seen. He knew
very well that snug neighbors meant finer hay,
with less wood in the grass stems, and that is
just the kind of hay his horses and cattle like the
best.

When the grasses were strong enough they all
began to shoot up their flower stalks, and the
meadow was a beautiful sight, for it was a carpet of
many shades of green. And the Orchard-Grass,
lifting its stems highest of all, admired the rest
almost as much as itself. But its fe,et were very
much crowded. It tried to push its neighbors aside,
but they only bent a little and kept on growing.
And the whole meadow was at its very best.

Just when all the plants were telling themselves
how beautiful they were, a fearful shudder went
through them all, for they heard that awful noise
that as very yoUng plants they remembered in the
wheat. The tall Orchard-Grass looked over its
lower neighbors and saw a big, clattering machine,
drawn by two beasts which nipped at the highest
grasses as they passed. And as the thing moved,
all the green stalks went down beneath it, and

101

beyond, the field was even cleaner than it was when
the wheat was removed. Nearer and nearer came
the monster, and soon it was upon them. The
Orchard-Grass trembled to its very roots, and then
a terrible thing happened — the Orchard-Grass
was beheaded by one of the beasts, and the next
instant it was cut to the ground by the machine.

Who will tell the story of what became of the
grasses after the machine had cut them all ?

Bureau Nature Study,
CopmL University, Ithaca, N.

102

XX. TWO COUSINS

There were two cousins, each having a very good
opinion of the way in which she stored her food.
The name of one was Purple Turnip, and the other

: Miss Early Cabbage.'

was called Early Cabbage. Both belonged to the
-Brassica family, very worthy people, though not so
well-born as the Rose family.

io3

It happened that the two cousins found them-
selves opposite each other in the school garden, and
as the days passed, each spent a great deal of time

" Miss Purple Turnip."

in talking to herself about her way of growing.
Purple never so much as looked at Early, and

T7ot-l-ir caur nnfninfr Knf tn/=» cr\il artrl fnp cL-ir V*nf

104

sometimes people talk so much and so loud that
everybody hears what is said. That is how I
happened to hear the two cousins.

Miss Early was very proud of her big leaves.
She spread them out to the sun, taking care to
arrange them so that as much as possible of each
leaf should be in the full sunshine. For several
weeks she insisted on showing her big leaves, and
the more the gardener hoed, the more she spread
them out, until she touched her neighbors in the
row. In about two months, however, she seemed to
change her plan. Instead of spreading out her
leaves, she kept them hidden away in a bud. While
the leaves were big, one could hardly see the little
bud in the midst of them, but when the great leaves
stopped growing, the little bud became larger and
larger until it stopped looking like a bud and looked
more and more like a cabbage head.

Miss Purple could not boast of big leaves like
Miss Early, and, indeed, she was a much more
modest person. She did nothing to attract atten-
tion. At first she spread her leaves flat on the
ground, and later she lifted them larger and stronger,
so that the sunshine could touch them on both
sides. When her leaves were full grown, she did
not change her manner of life, so far as I could see.
She did not get a big head, like her cousin, Miss

105

Early Cabbage. And neither did she send up
a flower stalk, as did another cousin of hers,
Miss White Mustard. She seemed to be resting.
I began to think she was getting lazy, when the
gardener came and pulled her neighbor up, and then
I saw that she had been making a big round root
under the ground, while her cousin was making a
head. All the while, each cousin had been telling
herself how much better her way of growing was
than any other.

I wanted to see what Miss Purple Turnip would
do with her round root and what Miss Early Cab-
bage would do with her big head, so I watched them
through the summer. Miss Early's head grew so
big that it could grow no bigger, then it seemed to
rest awhile, and then one morning — it cracked !

, And Miss Purple simply sat there, and did not
change at all for several weeks.

In a week or two after the cracking of Miss
Early's head, I was surprised to see that she had be-
gun to grow again, and it seemed to me that her
growth was even faster than when her big leaves
were forming. Out of her head came a tall stalk,
that branched freely, and soon was covered with
buds, and directly Miss Early was wearing a flowered
gown !

And Miss Purple, after her rest, also pushed up a

io6

flower stalk, and when she put on her flowered
gown, it was so much like her cousin's that you
might have thought they were cut from the same
piece of cloth, except that one was a dull pink and
the. other a yellow.

And after they had admired themselves awhile,
and had a good many visitors, they laid aside their
flowered frocks, and in a few days the seed pods
came where the flowers had been ; and soon the seed
was ripe.

But by the time the cousins were covered with
seed pods a great change had come to head and
root. In fact, Miss Early Cabbage's head had en-
tirely disappeared, and the round root of Miss
Purple Turnip was almost hollow. When I cut
Miss Cabbage down, I saw that her stem was hollow
too. Now, you all know how good to eat the
" heart " of a cabbage head is !

What had become of Miss Cabbage's head, and
where had the good part of Miss Turnip's round
root gone?

io7

XXI. A BLANKET GARDEN

Yes, a tiny little garden, no bigger than a blanket,
and you would hardly believe how many things grew
in it, nor how much better they tasted than the
things that came from the big garden, where plow-
ing and hoeing and all • manner of hard work were
necessary !

You must know that our blanket garden was more

A hotbed.

like a playhouse than a place for hard work. We
made it in January and ate radishes from it in Feb-
ruary, and about the time for sowing beet seed in the
big garden we were eating lettuce that grew in the
blanket garden. ' The market gardener would have
called it a hotbed, but to me it was more like a
blanket garden, where the plants were kept cozy

io8

and warm, as we are in the cold winter nights by
nice wool blankets.

In the first place, we dug an oblong space six
feet wide, twelve feet long, and eighteen inches deep.
It was on the south side of a big barn, where
cold winds could not reach it, and where it was
warm in the sun, even on cold days. Then we
made a wall of posts and boards, fitting close to
the sides of our garden. The back wall, toward the
barn, was three feet high, eighteen inches above the
surface of the ground ; and the front wall was thirty
inches high, twelve inches above the surface. A piece
of two by four joist was set in from back to front
every three feet, and the ends of the frame were
beveled so as to make an even slant from the back
to the front.

During the winter, manure from the horse stalls
had been saved, and turned several times, so that
when the frame was made, enough hot manure had
been saved to fill it. The manure was turned
frequently to keep it from burning, and to save the
heat, so that it would last until spring in the garden
frame. Each time it was turned, it was shaken
apart, so as to let in plenty of air. The bedding was
left mixed with the manure.

When the frame was ready, a layer of manure
nine inches deep was put in the bottom, and tramped,

109

then another layer was added, and so on until it was
eighteen or twenty inches deep, tramped firmly.
Then four inches of rich garden loam, containing
enough sand to make it drain well, was spread
evenly over the manure, and we put the blanket on.

And what do you think the blanket was made of ?
Not wool, but glass. We had the lumber dealer
order us four hotbed sash, each three by six feet,
with three rows of glass, the panes ten by twelve
inches ; the sash rested close on the joists we had
put from front to rear of our frame, and so our
blanket garden was finished.

In a few days, the manure in the frame began
heating, and for a day or two the soil next it was
very warm to the touch ; but this high heat was
soon gone, and then the garden was ready for plant-
ing.

We had grown some Boston Market lettuce
plants in a box in the kitchen window, and they
were about two inches high when the garden was
ready. These we planted first, setting them six in-
ches apart in rows nine inches apart. Half way be-
tween the lettuce rows we planted Twenty-Day
Forcing radish, putting the seed one inch apart
and half an inch deep. We planted two sashes
of lettuce, but only one sash of radish. Between
the lettuce plants under the other sash we sowed

no

Crosby's Egyptian beet. We sowed four rows of
Early Jersey Wakefield cabbage, two rows of White
Plume celery, and two rows of Earliana tomato.
These seed were sown quite thick in the rows,
four inches apart. One sash was left vacant, and
when the tomato and celery plants showed their
fourth leaf they were transplanted two inches apart
so as to have a big start by the time warm weather
should come.

The heat from the manure warmed the soil like
the May sun, and the glass kept the heat in the
frame. We watered the soil with a sprinkler, and on
every bright day we raised the sash to admit fresh
air, and so the little seedlings found themselves even
better off than they would have been in the open
ground in spring.

And they needed more attention than a spring
garden, but you see the whole blanket garden was
so small that it was like play to weed it and water
it and air it, and it was very interesting to see the
plants grow. Almost before the lettuce plants be-
gan to thrive the radishes were ready for use. The
radish is a cousin of Miss Turnip and has the same
habit of storing food in its root, to use later in seed
making.

By the time the radishes were used, the lettuce plants
had grown so as almost to touch, and in March they

Ill

had formed heads, the inner leaves of which were
cream-colored, and so good ! When the lettuce
was cut, its place was given to flower seeds, and
when the flowering plants were sent into the garden,
sweet potatoes were set in the blanket garden and
their sprouts were ready for planting in June, to
make a late crop. So we had radishes and lettuce
from the frames before spring came, then we got an
early start for our flowers, and finally grew sweet po-
tato plants. Of course the cabbage and celery and
tomato plants were planted out when the weather
was warm enough, so our blanket garden was a
great help, and paid better for the amount of space
given it than anything else on the farm.

112

XXII. CUTTINGS

It has been quite a while since we had our lesson
on seeds and, buds, and almost all of the crops we
have talked about since are grown from seeds. To-
day we shall talk about stem buds and how to grow
plants from them. The potato, grape, rose, black-
berry, geranium, and many other plants are com-

A rooted cutting of hydrangea.

monly grown from cuttings of wood or root that
have one or more buds. Perhaps you have thought
that only hard plants, like trees, have wood in their
stems ; but the little threads that run through the
leaves of plantain and through corn stalks are all
wood, and every geranium stem has a ring of wood

H3

around its pith. Some time when you have them
handy I want you to compare the stem of a gera-
nium plant with a long shoot from a peach tree,
looking carefully at each from the tip to the base
of the stem.

All along the stems I have spoken of there are
buds ; and if we were only skillful enough and could
give it just the right amount of heat and moisture
we could grow a plant from every well-grown bud
that forms. You may remember that there is a bud
in every seed. It feeds on a supply of food stored
in the seed until leaves and roots are formed. There
is a similar store of food in all stems, enough for
each bud that sprouts until it grows leaves and can
digest its own food. This is why all other plants
that live more than one season are able to push
forth leaves in the spring. The buds are nourished
on food stored in the stem the summer before.

If a stem, bearing a few buds, is cut from a grape-
vine in winter, and is planted at once in fresh soil or
sand, growth will begin at the approach of summer.
The buds will swell exactly as if the cuttings had
not been removed from the parent plant. Soon buds
will sprout, and while little leaves will form on the
new growth, little roots are forming in the soil. By
fall the young vine will be three feet long or more,
and ready for planting in the vineyard.

114

In the same way, many flowering shrubs can be
grown. Such flowering plants as geranium, carna-
tion, heliotrope, the begonias, and fuchsias are grown
from cuttings of new wood.
Very soft, rapid-growing shoots
are not so good for cuttings as
firmer shoots, but hard wood
should not be used.

The best way to make cut-
tings is to cut the base just
below a bud, and have at least
one joint, making the top cut
half an inch above a bud. The
cutting should be from one to
two inches long, and the end of
the shoot makes the best cut-
ting, if it is not too short. Not
more than two full-grown leaves
should be left on the cutting.
If the leaves are very large, the
outer half of each can be cut
away. This is often done with
coleus plants. Plant them in a box of sand, placing
them one inch apart in rows two inches apart, set-
ting them not more than one inch deep.

Some cuttings root in ten days, and others require
several weeks. The kinds named above take from

A root cutting of horse
radish.

"5

two to four weeks to root, depending on the heat.
The cuttings can be taken from the sand without
injury, provided it is moist. When they are rooted,
they are planted in a rich, sandy soil, in pots, cans,
or boxes ; or if left in the sand until strong roots
are formed they can be planted at once in the
garden.

Some plants, like blackberry and horse radish,
grow readily from root cuttings, the young shoots
pushing up exactly as though seed had been planted.
The Irish potato tuber is a short, thickened stem
that grows underground. Its eyes are buds, and it
is these which form the new plants when we grow
potatoes. The sweet potato plants are shoots
from the roots which are bedded down in the spring.
How do we grow strawberries, black raspberries, and
red raspberries?

n6

XXIII. TRANSPLANTING

If ever you visit a greenhouse, you will see a
great many plants in very small pots, and even the
largest plants will be growing in much less space
than they would have occupied in open ground.

The florist moves
his plants from pot
to pot, each time
giving the flower a
pot only one size
larger than it had
before. It would
be much simpler
and a great saving
of work to set the
cutting, as soon as
it had rooted, into
a big pot, where it
could grow a long
time before it
would need more
room.

Chrysanthemums as transplanted.

But the most interesting place is the evergreen
nursery. You know they have nurseries for trees as
well as for children. The little evergreens — pine,
spruce, hemlock, cedar — are so delicate when they

ii7

first come through the ground that they must be
grown in a house made of lath screens to protect
them from the hot sunshine. A hemlock tree does
not grow an inch high the first season. The seeds
are sown very thick and when the tiny trees are two
or three years old they are taken up and set about
two inches apart in rows six or eight inches apart.

A hillside orchard.

Here they spend two more years in the screen
house, and then they are transplanted to the nursery
rows. Usually the more delicate evergreens will
have been moved four or five times before they are
ready for sale.

In the Southern States the market gardener sows
his early cabbage seed very thick in seed beds in

u8

September, and in early November he transplants
them a few inches apart in cold frames, where they
are kept until late February or March, when they
are set in the garden. If we want very early toma-
toes we sow the seed in shallow boxes in January,
then set each seedling in a small pot. As soon as
roots show against the side of the pot, we set the
plant in a larger one, and possibly transplant it a
third time before the weather is settled enough to
set it in the open ground. I have known tomatoes
grown in four-inch pots to have small fruit on them
when put in the garden, early in May.

Fruit trees are grown very close together in rows
the first year or two. The nurseryman may grow
250,000 trees on an acre, where the orchardist could
not grow 250, because when large they would be
too close together.

The florist transplants his potted plants to get
the greatest growth of root in the smallest space, as
his room is always limited ; and besides, plants bloom
more freely when their root growth is restricted.

The evergreen grower transplants his little trees
frequently in order to get as many fine roots as pos-
sible near the base of the stem, so that when the
tree is sold it will lose few roots in the last digging.

The market gardener transplants his cabbage and
tomatoes to prolong his season, growing them in

ii9

the winter under glass and getting well-rooted plants
for setting in the field.

The nurseryman transplants his fruit trees because
he can grow many in a small space, and with little
labor, while young; and when they get larger the
trees must have a great deal of room.

Transplanting is always a great advantage to the
plant when carefully done, for every time a young
root is cut several branches will form, in the. same
way as pruning the limb of a tree causes it to branch
more freely. By this means the root-surface is in-
creased, and the plant can thereby secure more food
from the soil.

120

XXIV. ROB'S GARDEN

I wonder how many boys who read this story
dislike the garden as much as Rob did ! And I
wonder whether boys and girls who have gardens of
their own learn at last to love them as Rob loved his.

Spading with narrow forkfuls.

Rob was a town boy who lived with his grand-
mother. There was a small yard with a little grass
plot in front and a garden behind the house. Noth-
ing in all Rob's experience was so annoying as the
little garden in the back yard. Whenever he wanted
to play marbles in the spring the garden had to be

121

dug. When all the boys were going swimming in
summer the garden had to be weeded. And Rob
was fast growing to dislike, not only the garden, but
all kinds of plants.

One spring Rob's uncle came home for a visit
just as the frost was gone from the garden. He

Fining the soil with a rake.

liked to dig and he had many things to tell Rob about
the soil and manures and different kinds of seeds.
They worked in the garden together, and for the first
time in his life Rob found himself almost enjoying
the garden work. Uncle Bert spread a thick coat of
manure on the land and turned the soil with deep,

122

narrow forkfuls, so that when he had finished dig-
ging there was no need of hoeing at all, and he
made raking so easy that to smooth the surface was
almost like play. They saved all the " fish worms "
as they dug, for Uncle Bert had a habit of always
finding time for a little fun after the work was over.

Smoothing the soil with a rake.

Do you remember what the earthworms do for the
soil?

It was a little garden, so small that a horse and
cultivator could hardly have turned around in it ; so
all the work was done by hand. Rob often said
before he learned to like the garden that if he could

123

plow the land, as they did at Uncle Walter's on
the farm, it would be all right. But I doubt if farm
boys like to plow much better than Rob liked to dig
with a spading fork.

Uncle Bert showed Rob how much easier and
better a spading fork worked when narrow instead
of wide forkfuls were taken ; and he showed him how
to break and fine the soil by digging the rake teeth
into it, and how to smooth the surface by holding
the rake handle almost straight up and passing the
back of the teeth lightly over it. Then they made
straight rows with the back of the rake, and they
planted such things as lettuce, radish, spinach, carrot,
parsnip, and salsify, in rows fifteen inches apart, cov-
ering the seed from one half to one inch deep and
pressing the soil over the seed by tapping it with the
back of the rake. They set early cabbage plants
fifteen inches apart in rows two feet apart. That
was gardening enough for one day. Later on beans
and tomatoes, sweet corn and cucumbers, found a
place in the little garden. You see there were
only four people in the family, and while the gar-
den was only 36 by 44 feet in size, it produced
plenty of these vegetables for the family.

Now, Uncle Bert had a way of looking at things
that was new to Rob, and it helped make the garden
pleasanter. When Rob learned that the right way

124

to kill weeds with a hoe is to scalp them, he looked
on every weed as a wild Indian, and went on the
war path after them. He stopped cutting deep into
the soil as though he were trying to dig it all up

again, but he filed his
hoe sharp and then
cut the weeds off just
a little below the sur-
face, stirring them
about so that they
would dry quickly.

Uncle Bert also
showed Rob how
hoeing, when done in
the right way, was as
helpful in saving
a scalped weed. moisture in the gar-

den as harrowing was in the field. While they
worked, Rob learned that the weeds were robbers,
and that a dry crust among the plants in the
garden is a robber also, since it lets the moisture
out of the soil into the air. One set of robbers
they killed by scalping, and the others they destroyed
entirely with their hoes.

Then they went swimming.

Somehow, as the season advanced, it was noticed
that Rob stopped scolding, and began to talk of " my

125

peas " and " my tomatoes." He was taking a pride
in his garden. Perhaps the peas and tomatoes had
been suggesting things to the boy while they all
worked together in the garden. Of course the
plants could not dig, nor rake, nor hoe; but they had
their own work to do, and they were able to do it
well because the boy had learned how to help them.
I wish every boy in this school would try to see
how many pleasant ways of doing pleasant things
can be found in a garden ; and perhaps there is a
" swimming hole " near enough to wash away the
memory of all the unpleasant parts.

126

XXV. THE ORCHARD

There may be some people who do not like the
garden, but everybody likes the orchard. Of course
there are different kinds of orchards, but the kind I
mean is a place where fruit grows ; that is the only
kind people like. I know of orchards where sassa-
fras grows among starving apple trees that are full
of dead limbs, and bear a great many lichens, and
insect pests, and fungi — everything, one might
almost say, but fruit ! I can't understand why the
owners do not cut the old trees up for firewood,
and plant the land to crops they like well enough
to take care of. Can you ?

Before the farmer plants an orchard, he ought to
say to himself : " I want to grow fruit on this land,
just as I want to grow corn and wheat in the fields.
I know I can not get a crop of corn or wheat with-
out doing the work those crops need ; so I will do
my best also for my orchard, and give it just the
care it requires."

It only takes one year to grow a crop of wheat,
and the following year some other crop is put in
that field. But the orchard must grow several years
before it begins to bear, and then, year after year,
it ought to yield better and larger crops. If it is
not worth caring for, it is not worth having. Give

127

it just as much care as any other field every year
and it will be very apt to give you a good profit.
Neglect it and it will pay no better than any other
neglected field. That is what I want you to re-
member while you are planting an orchard.

Choose a hilltop or hillside — a north or west

A fruiting quince tree.

slope is best for almost all kinds of fruit trees. Buy
strong one-year-old peach and apple, and two-year-
old cherry, plum, pear, and quince. Set apple trees
twenty-eight feet apart and all others sixteen feet
apart. An orchard looks best and is most easily
cared for when the rows are perfectly straight, but if

128

it is to be planted on a steep slope it is best to set
the trees in straight rows up and down the hill, with
each row on the same level around the hill. This
will give an irregular stand, but it will enable the
owner to plow around the hills instead of over them,

and in a measure pre-
vent washing.

Make large holes,
cut away all bruised
roots with a sharp
knife, give them their
natural spread and fill
in fine soil carefully
and firmly around
them. The trees
should stand about
an inch deeper than
they stood in the
nursery. Every win-
ter the fruit trees
should be pruned, and all through the growing
season they should be cultivated and protected from
insects and disease.

Pruning is cutting out branches in order that
those remaining may have more room, more food,
and more light, and thus grow better. Wild trees
prune themselves. If you will take a walk in the

A cherry tree in full bloom.

129

woods where the trees grow very thick, you may be
able to see how they get rid of useless branches.

Fruit trees, however, are planted so far apart that
they do not prune themselves readily; and besides,
they can not do the work themselves as well as we can.

Early in the spring,
the orchard should be
plowed at least six
inches deep, and then
the disk harrow or the
spike-tooth harrow
should keep, the
weeds down until
May, when cowpeas
can be sown. In
August, as soon as
the pea hay is made,
the orchard is disked,
and at once sown to
rye, which tillers well
before freezing

, , . A well-pruned young apple tree.

weather, and makes

the best kind of soil cover for the winter. Rabbits
are apt to gnaw the bark of fruit trees, but they like
rye better than bark, and seldom harm trees where
rye is growing.

While the trees are young, small-growing corn,

130

potatoes, strawberries, navy beans, and other crops
that require hoeing, but do not rob the trees of too
much food, may be grown in the orchard, but after
they begin to bear, the trees should have all the
soil. No soil is rich enough to produce many crops
of fruit without manure, any more than a field could
yield large crops of grain year after year without
fertilizers.

Many kinds of insects feed on the leaves and bark
and fruit of orchard trees, and there are plant dis-
eases, such as mildew, apple scab, and peach rot,
that infest them. All these must be guarded
against, and with plowing and cultivating and prun-
ing and spraying, the owner of an orchard is as
busy as the owner of a wheat farm or a stock farm ;
and yet there are a great many farmers who think
that fruit trees grow like forest trees, and require no
care. If we wished to grow peach wood and apple
wood, we might treat the trees as we would ash or
maple, but we want to grow fruit, with just enough
wood for the fruit to hang on.

I3i

XXVI. THE GRATEFUL PLANTS

A good many years ago there was a little boy
who looked just like me. He never lived in the
country, but from the time he was big enough to
pick strawberries (and you know a very little boy
can do that) he worked during the long summer
vacation in a market garden.

There was a wise old English gardener who
looked after the boys, and worked with them. He
not only showed them how to do their work, but also
tried to give them reasons for his methods. And
always he would finish his little talks with the same
speech : " Boys, you will never make good gardeners
until you learn to love plants."

And now, at the close of this little book, I feel
like saying to all the boys and girls who have been
working with me, " The one thing above all others
that I hope you have learned is to love the plants."
If you love them well enough, you will study them
until you learn their ways, so that you may do
everything necessary to make them as perfect as
they can be grown. You will study the soil in
which they grow, and learn how to make it more
fertile, so that it will produce better crops. You will
find what kind of grasses will grow best on your
farm, and what variety of corn will give the largest

132

yield. You will see how your neighbor treats his
land, and try to make your own as good or better.
You will study the weeds and learn lessons in the
forest and by the roadside. And once in a while,
perhaps, some plant will tell you a secret of its own
that nobody else knows.

Sometimes when I am hoeing in the garden, I
have a little make-believe conversation with the
vegetables. One must be very intimate with the
plants before such talks are possible.

One day a tomato plant became very confiding,
and it said to me, " I often wonder, when I remem-
ber what my great-great-great-grandmother was like,
whether men think as much of us tomatoes as we
think of men ! Every one of us is deeply grateful to
man for helping us to improve so rapidly, and to be
of so much more importance among the garden plants
than our forefathers. I am not ashamed of my fam-
ily, but when I think how long man loved my cousin,
the potato, before he even knew us, it really makes
me feel hurt. Of course, now everybody loves us,
but, can you believe it ? there were years and years
when people actually thought we were poisonous,
and they only allowed us a place in the garden as
curiosities. They called us ' love-apples ' — your
own grandmother will tell you so — but they did
not love us." And the tomato sighed at the humble

133

place its forefathers had held in the opinion of man-
kind. Then it continued its story : " I must admit
that our family has changed greatly since the days
when we were called love-apples. Why, I don't be-
lieve I look any more like a love-apple than you
resemble a wild Indian ! "

" How did you change your appearance so much ? "
I asked. " When
I was a little boy,
all the tomatoes
were either pear-
shaped and small,
or very much
ribbed, and you
are as smooth
and beautiful as
can be."

" Thank you,"
said the tomato,
" it is so nice to
hear pleasant things. I will tell you. One day a
man discovered that we were not poisonous at all,
but were really very good to eat ; so he moved us out
of the flower border, where we had always been kept,
and where we were crowded, and put us in the big
garden, where we could spread out our roots and
find plenty of food.

A ribbed tomato.

134

" Now you know when any one does you a kind-
ness you try to return it in some way, and all the
plants have the same feeling. Having plenty to eat,
we stored up more food, and made better fruit.
And our good friend, who became very much in-
terested in watching us, chose the very largest and
best fruits he could find among us, and saved the
seeds from them. And when these seeds were
planted and grew to fruiting size, every plant among
them did its very best to make its fruit more per-
fect. And so it was only a few generations till, by
the help of the good man who selected the seeds of
the very best fruits each year, we managed to hide
all our' ribs with flesh. Now everybody likes us ;
and really, when I think of those dear old ribby
ancestors of mine, I feel very sorry that men did not
learn to love them sooner.

" But I will tell you a secret," continued the
tomato plant. " Every kind of plant in the world,
and each plant of every kind, must do its very best
for itself or it is apt to die out entirely. My ! my !
when I remember how much man has helped us
tomatoes, I pity the poor forest trees, even though
they are ever so much larger than we. We are not
crowded, and whenever one of those upstart weeds
tries to grow among us the gardener cuts his head
off ; but nobody helps the forest trees. Of course

135

the old trees must sow millions of seeds, because
somehow man does not love them as he does us,
and so does not protect and help them, and though
millions sprout in the spring they are no sooner born
than they begin to fight one another. You see how

Well-rounded tomato.

it is : there is not room nor food enough for all of
them, so very soon they struggle with one another
for room and food. Always the strongest win and
the weakest die. It must be pitiful to see the dying
saplings in a pine thicket," said the tomato. " The
strong pines take so much room that they soon

136

overtop the weaker ones, and you know plants can
not live without light. So from the first year, as
long as the forest lives, the trees must strive against
each other and only the best reach a grand old age.
"All plants, both wild and cultivated, have had
much the same history as our family, only among
the wild plants the changes have been very much
slower than among such plants as man has helped.
We love mankind. How can we help it when men
have done so much for us ? I wish," said the tomato,
wistfully — " oh ! how I wish that all men would
love us too ; for then we would be even more perfect
and beautiful and useful than we are now."

137

SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS

In presuming to add to the curriculum a subject new to the
schools and to the teachers, I am hopeful that the teacher may
find in it a diversion, and a help in maintaining a live interest on
the part of many boys and girls who might otherwise be apa-
thetic toward all school work.

At first thought it seems absurd to speak of agriculture as a
new subject in rural schools, surrounded as they are by fields
and patronized exclusively by farmers. But as teachers we all
have found to our sorrow that English is a new subject to the
pupil, though no one can recall the time when he was not familiar
with it. And so it is with agriculture, although every pupil in
the rural schools may know something about farming. I hope my
suggestions will lead the teacher to find purely local illustrative
material, for the more concrete we make the first lessons on any
subject, the greater our chance of success.

My notion of writing these stories (I would call all of them
stories, though in only a few is the story form attempted) is that
pupils of the fourth to sixth grades might use one or two of them
a week instead of a reading lesson, and that for every story
some original work would be required of each pupil. Some
stories will be best illustrated by asking for reports of farm
operations at home, others by the making of simple experiments
at school, and still others by excursions of the class to the woods
or to the fields.

In any event, let the teacher remember that these are to be
simple lessons, and that they do not attempt to cover the vast
field of agriculture. Call them nature studies if you like the name
better. Make a school garden and illustrate the stories there if you
happen to be enough interested in the idea to make it a practical
success. It is true the average country school yard is about the
last place an intelligent farmer would think of choosing for field
or garden operations, and the average school teacher neither

138

plows nor sows nor reaps, while on all sides are examples to
serve his every need ; but a successful school garden is an
invaluable aid in all kinds of nature work, and wherever condi-
tions are at all favorable the teacher should attempt one.

It would seem that any form of instruction that begins within
the present knowledge of the pupil and carries him step by step
into the unknown would profit him. And if the reasons of
things can be discovered, rather than taught, the discoverer is an
interested voyager in that particular sea.

I have tried in each story to throw a little light on the great
subject of economic plant production, and the series as a whole
should give the pupil a simple notion of the why and the how
of field work.

You will need some material that may not be available in your
district. Let your state university or agricultural college help
you. These institutions can do no better work than the particu-
lar form of " university extension " that will bring them into
close touch with the common schools. They can send you grape
cuttings and flcwer slips and give an occasional help over the
hard places, if you will look ahead and discover your need in
time. If you have a school garden, or want one, they will send
you a canna or a dahlia or some other plant to put in it, for every
university or agricultural college would like to have a small share
in every rural school.

But we all know that only a little of the world's interest is in
books ; and still less of childhood's interest centers there. Na-
ture allures the children and teaches them many things. We who
are interested in the rural schools can do no better work for our
commonwealth than to aid in making farm life and the things
pertaining to it more attractive to the farm boy or girl. There
is a certain amount of drudgery inseparable from farm life, but
there is vastly more of interest than many tillers of the soil have
discovered. Let us begin with the children and try to give them
an idea of their relation to the plant world. It will make work
more interesting, and life larger and better.

139

SUGGESTIONS

I. Introduction. — Take the children to a nursery if there is
one in the neighborhood, and show them the little fruit trees.
As you go to and from school, be on the lookout for plants that
increase by runners, underground stems, etc. In all of them,
as the new plants become established the old ones die, and thus
the plant slowly moves from place to place. Set a strawberry
plant in the school-garden, in rich soil. Hoe it and water it well.
Layer each runner so as to give the greatest amount of room, and
as the new runners appear layer them so that they will root quickly.
By fall the single plant should have spread over a circle of more
than ten feet. As many as 1260 plants have been grown from
one in a single season.

II. Soil. — Give each child a piece of soft stone, like shale or
sandstone, and some very dry decayed forest leaves. Let him
pound these leaves and the stone into dust, mix them with
water in a fruit jar (one tenth dust, nine tenths water), shake
violently, and let the mixture stand over night. In the morn-
ing let him drain off the water carefully and set the jar on the
back of the kitchen stove until the contents can be handled.
Compare with soil from a garden and from a stony field. Dig
in moist earth for angleworms, using sharp spade (watch for
the holes the worms make in the soil) ; break up spadefuls with
the hands to see where the holes go. Let the school visit a
river or a creek and see how sand bars and washed banks are
made. Let the school visit an old field or a hillside and see
gullying.

III. Kinds of Soil. — Have each pupil dig a hole in the
garden at home, deep enough to show the change in color
between the top soil and that below (subsoil). The pupil should
spade one side of the hole vertical, and measure with a rule the
depth of surface soil (to changed color). Have each pupil bring
a small sample of soil from a field at home and let the class
decide whether it is a clay, sand, or loam, or some modification
of one of these.

140

Have a pile of clay and another of sand in the yard, and
mix gradually, noting the change. Instead of sand use pul-
verized dry leaves.

Wet samples of clay, sand, loam, and gravel, and determine
the order of their drying.

Plant wheat seed in fresh clay, sand, and loam, and see which
sprouts quickest and best. Let the plants dry up, and see
which lives longest without water.

The teacher will often find no pure clay, nor clean sand, in his
vicinity ; the clays differ in color and texture, but are alike in
their relation to water, which makes them stiff and plastic.

Sand may be washed and baked in an oven. If clay is treated
in the same way, a good lesson is found for the children. Re-
member that so far as agriculture is concerned, the whole inter-
est in soil rests in its relation to the plant ; and as the soil food
of the plant is only absorbed in water, the child should be made
to see that any soil, by whatever name, or of whatever color or
texture, that will allow water to drain from it, and still retain
enough to make plants grow, is a safe soil to use for farming.
A mixture of pure sand and clay in the right proportions for this
result is called loam. Almost everywhere the top soil is loam,
even though the subsoil is clay or sand. The top soil always
contains more or less decayed vegetable matter (humus), which
both enriches it and improves its water-holding power.

IV. The Plant and the Soil. — Secure several blotters from an
insurance office, or buy blotting paper in a large piece and fold
it to a convenient size. On a Monday morning dip the blotters in
water, then sow wheat and radish seed between them. Put them
in a closed box or drawer to prevent drying, and thereafter keep
them damp but not wet. Remove the cover (upper) blotter every
day and watch the seeds grow. By the end of the week, if the
schoolroom is kept warm, both wheat and radish will have
rooted enough to show root hairs. The root tips increase in
length, and if they had hairs on them, the hairs would all be
rubbed off as the root tip pushed into the soil. Only the tips of

141

the ro'ot lengthen. Carefully dig up young plants of any kind,
wash the soil off very gently, and make a study of root hairs.
Potted geraniums are very good for this exercise, when the
roots have reached the sides of the pot. There are no hairs
on old roots, because they have done their work in that part of
the soil, and as the root pushes into fresh soil the hairs develop
there. v

Tree roots are almost all — even in the largest trees — within
four feet of the surface, because there is much more plant food
in the surface layers of soil than in the lower or subsoil. Surface
soil is colored by decayed leaves, twigs, etc., and such vegetable
matter is washed into the soil by rain. The upper layers of soil
act as a filter, and by the time the water has passed through
three or four feet of soil it will have become colorless.

Make all the observations suggested in the story.

V. Little Rivers under the Ground. — Find a cut in a wood
road like that described, and watch what happens after a rain.

Underground waterways of this kind are better than surface
gullies, because they do not wash the rich surface soil away, and
they prevent gullying. After a sharp shower take the class out to
a gully and see how much washing is going on. This is an espe-
cially important subject for the South, because our soils wash
away very badly, and every effort to prevent this waste should
be encouraged.

VI. What the Forest does for the Soil. — Have an excursion
to a thick woodland, if possible adjacent to orchards, grainfields,
and meadows. Study the surface of the soil in all. Why do the
leaves not make a mulch (soil cover) in the orchard as they do
in the forest ? Why does not the meadow grass decay and make
humus like the forest litter ? Because much of the grass is cut
for hay, and what is left decays very slowly, since the sun
keeps it dry. Grass really does make humus in time. The
prairie soils of the West are very rich in humus, made entirely
from decayed grass, leaves, stems, and roots. In the forest see
whether all kinds of leaves decay with equal rapidity. Compare

142

especially needle-shaped leaves (pine) with broad leaves (maple,
oak, etc.).

Why do ladies get leaf-mold for their house plants ? Study
particularly some abandoned field, such as is described in the
story. Have the pupils bring reports from home of the length
of time the different farm fields have been in cultivation, and of
the results of parents' observations of effect of forest growth in
reclaiming land.

VII. The Robber Farmer. — The object of this story is to show
the importance of fertilizing •the soil. The teacher should not
attempt to explain the composition of fertilizers and manures,
but the pupil should be impressed with the fact that every plant
that is removed from the farm takes away a small but definite
amount of plant food, and if this is not replaced the fields will
gradually become sterile. In fact, good farming demands that
each year more plant food (fertilizers) be added to the soil than
is removed in the crop, thus gradually improving instead of re-
ducing the soil fertility.

Let each pupil bring the history of one field in the home farm
as far back as he can learn it — just what crops were produced
in it, and just how much manure or fertilizer was applied;
whether it has been under cultivation ever since it was cleared
of forest, or whether it has been in grass, and how often and how
long each time. Such records will show whether there is any
" robbery " going on in your neighborhood.

VIII. Weeds. — Work with weeds can go on from this lesson
to the end of the year. Have each pupil make a collection of
weeds. Get a specimen in flower and press it in an old book, or
make a press of newspapers with a piece of board weighted by a
stone. If you cannot name them, your State Experiment Station
will doubtless be glad to help you, though every rural teacher
should have a Gray's " Manual of Botany," and learn to classify
his own specimens. Each specimen in the pupil's collection
should be labeled with its common name, and a brief description
of its bad habits, with the means of destroying it. If collections

143

of the ripe fruit and seed can be secured, all the better. Make a
weed collection for the school. In this connection teach the
class that all the time there is a great struggle going on among
the plants for food and for room to grow in. Not one in ten
thousand of the seeds that sprout every spring lives to produce
seed, and so man must protect the plants that are useful to him
by destroying the others, which he calls weeds.

Have each pupil find all the different weeds he can in his
father's hayfield, and in the cornfield. In which is there the
greater number, and why ? What weeds live in the ground over
winter? What weeds spread by seed only? What weeds spread by
stems ? What weeds produce most seed ? What weed seeds have
wings, or hair, or silk, or any other means of being spread by the
wind ? Bring specimens to school (always by preference the entire
plant). What weeds spread by fastening themselves to animals
or to people's clothing? You see there are many things to work
up about the weeds. Tillage is stirring the soil. Dust mulch is
a soil covering of dust, instead of leaves, straw, etc., commonly
used for mulching.

IX. What the Russian Thistle Did. — The Russian thistle
(Salsola kalt) is a tumbleweed — one of a class which breaks off
at the ground when its seed is ripe, and is blown before the wind
for a great distance, dropping its seed as it goes. This form is
less common in the east than in the plains, and is given as
showing one of the many interesting ways the plants have of
spreading their seed abroad. A valuable exercise is the study
of seed distribution by different kinds of plants.

X. The Plant's Business. — Have the class tell the special
usefulness to man of many plants not named in the lesson, and
just what part of each is used.

Flax. — Woody part of stem for linen. Seed for " linseed "
oil and oil cake.

Corn. — Pith to make cellulose, with which the sides of battle-
ships are stuffed, so that when a ball pierces the outer wall the
cellulose swells quickly and fills the hole.

144

Hemp. — Woody part of stem for ropes.

Hops. — Fruit for bread or beer making.

Tobacco. — Leaves for smoking, etc.

Peanuts. — Fruit for food.

Artichoke. — Root for stock food.

Globe artichoke. — Buds, vegetable, for food.

Asparagus. — Young shoots, vegetable, for food.

Rhubarb. — Leaf stalk, vegetable, for food.

Cauliflower. — Flower bud, vegetable, for food.

Use especially all farm and garden plants known in your
neighborhood.

XI. Buds and Seeds. — Have a boy dig up a number of black-
berry and red raspberry roots and have the class find buds on
them (not roots really, but underground stems).*

Find buds on Bermuda, Johnson, or other grass and
on corn. Tear away the sheath of the leaf which surrounds
the stem of grasses and grains, and at its base, attached just
above the joint, you will find a little bud. Compare this, as to
position, with the tree buds. Compare the potato tuber (the
potato itself) with the potato leaf stem. Find buds on both, and
see if there is anything on the potato that compares with the
leaf.

The bright colors of flowers are undoubtedly there to attract
insects. Dr. Mueller has written a large book, devoted entirely
to lists of insects that visit the different flowers. Have pupils
watch a flower on a bright morning and see how many kinds of
insects get into it.

Green-colored flowers are wind-fertilized — the Carolina pop-
lar, walnut, oak, ash, and most other forest trees, are of this
class. Many plants, like the red clover and orchids, could not
bear seeds at all if the insects did not help them.

Soak beans in water twenty-four to forty-eight hours, then slip
off the skin, separate the seed-leaves, and see the bud between
them. Compare with corn treated in the same way, and with
buds on growing plants.

145

In the spring watch the growth of leaf buds on a tree and
compare with the sprouting of seed — strikingly similar.

XII. Why do we Plow ? — Good plowing is seldom seen, and
the pupils of grades four to six often have this work to do.
One of the best things we could accomplish for agriculture
would be the improvement of plowing. Why not have a plow-
ing contest some day, and ask three of the best farmers in the
neighborhood to serve as judges ? Let the prize be a blue ribbon,
and let it be understood that to do work well is in itself the
greatest prize. Have the pupils measure (with a rule) the depth
of the plowing that is done at home. Have them report on sub-
soiling. Tell the boys to take a spade and dig straight down in
a grainfield, a cornfield, and a meadow, shaving one side of the
hole until smooth, and see if they can tell from the appearance of
the soil how deep it has been plowed. Good plowing means
straight furrows, so narrow that all the land is turned, and the
burying of all stubble, weeds, or other surface covering. The
deeper the plowing, the greater the benefit to the soil, provided
no more subsoil is turned up than will weather (crumble) in a
single season.

XIII. Give the Crops Plenty to Eat. — The elements which all
plants require for growth are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitro-
gen, potassium, iron, sulphur, phosphorus, magnesium, sodium,
chlorine, calcium, and silicon. Carbon is taken in through the
pores of leaves. Water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen,
and this is absorbed from the soil by the roots. All the other
elements named are dissolved in the soil water in the form of
nitrates, sulphates, phosphates, etc.

If you have a school garden, good work can be done by grow-
ing the same crop in beds that have not been fertilized and beds
fertilized with manure, cottonseed meal, acid phosphate, muriate
of potash. Beds ten by ten feet will not require more than
one pound of meal and of phosphate and a quarter of" a pound of
muriate of potash. Plant one bed to which the last three ferti-
lizers have been added — two and one quarter pounds of mixed

146

fertilizer. If you can get nitrate of soda, plant one bed without
the meal fertilizer, and after the plants are up sprinkle one
eighth of a pound of fine nitrate next to the plants. In three or
four weeks repeat the nitrate.

If you have no school garden, get the nearest neighbor to the
school to let your class do this work in his garden. Corn, small
grain, or any garden vegetable will answer the purpose.

Have the pupils report what fertilizers, and quantity per acre,
are used on the different crops at home.

Watch the effect of drought on different crops ; of too much
wet weather. Ensilage is a crop that has been chopped fine and
packed while green in an air-tight place, called a silo. Ensilage
is an especially good food for dairy cattle.

XIV. Sowing the Seed. — Let each pupil mark a bean plant at
home, and save it until all the beans are ripe, or yellow ; then
count the number of pods and the number of beans. The bean
makes comparatively few seeds. A fifteen-year-old apple tree
should bear fifteen bushels of apples. If there are one hundred
and fifty apples in a bushel, and they average seven seeds each,
how many seeds would a ten-acre orchard contain if the trees
stood twenty-eight by twenty-eight feet? Tell the class the
parable of the sower (Matt. xiii. 3-8).

From a handful of wheat select a hundred of the largest,
plumpest grains and plant in a row (at home or in the school
garden). In a row beside the first plant a hundred of the small-
est, shriveled grains. Any other seeds will do equally well —
radish are especially good, because they mature quickly.

Plant one lot (using the same number of seeds in all lots)
without firming the soil above them. Firm the soil on the second
lot. The result is most marked in dry weather.

Plant one lot in rough, lumpy soil, another in well-fined soil
(particularly useful, as many farmers neglect preparation of soil
for seed).

A blotting-paper garden is especially useful for showing effects
of moisture. Submerge one blotter of seeds in water, keep a

147

second dry, a third wet, but with access to air, and a fourth
damp but not wet. Comparisons are interesting. Have each
pupil examine daily at the same hour and keep a written record
of the number of seeds that sprout each day.

A cover crop is anything that is grown to prevent soil washing,
such as rye, crimson clover, etc. The cover crops are usually
sown in early fall, and are plowed under in the spring, thus be-
coming important means of soil improvement.

XV. Round and Round the Farm. — Rotation of crops is a
part of good farm management. If there is a farm in your
neighborhood where it has been in practice for several years,
make an excursion to it, and go over the fields with the farmer,
getting him to explain his system to the children. If you have
any old and young forest growths near your school, see if the
new growth is like the old forest near it. The forest is very apt
to " rotate." Find out what crops are most commonly grown
in your neighborhood and get the help of your best farmer in
arranging a rotation, making a diagram to suit the locality. All
the fields need not be of the same size or shape. Have each
pupil make a map of his home farm, and plan a rotation for it,
based on the experience of the best farmer in the neighborhood.

XVI. Stirring the Soil. — Make experiments in the school
garden, or home garden, in mulching a little square (say, three'
hills square, nine hills) of corn one foot deep with grass, s.traw,
weeds, or any other litter. Keep the surface of the ground on a
similar square adjacent, hoed one to two inches deep, so that no
crust is allowed to form on it. On a third square scalp the
weeds, but do not hoe nor cultivate, keeping clean, of weeds.
Note the results from week to week. Measure the height in
inches to the top of the stalk (including only the sheath of
the youngest leaf — not to its point). Note the yield.

If any of your neighbors use fine-shovel (spike-toothed or
two-inch) and others use " bull-tongue" or double-shovel culti-
vators, compare the work done, and show which is best, and
why.

148

Study for yourself, in the practice of your neighbors, the
methods of cultivation employed, keeping in mind the character
of season (wet or dry) and of the soil.

XVII. Hoed Crops. — If there is a market garden or " truck
farm " in your neighborhood, make an excursion to it, and see
how much more thoroughly crops are tilled than on the average
farm, especially the hoed crops. Examine market gardeners'
tools and implements and show how well adapted they are to the
stirring of the soil.

In the school or home garden try the experiment, in rows of
beans side by side, of keeping one well hoed and another hoed
very little. Early cabbage is a specially good crop for this exer-
cise. Take ten plants for each treatment. Stir the soil well
every week around the first ten and scalp the weeds only about
the second.

Try the effect of late cultivation (hoeing) on sweet corn. Keep
hoeing one lot until it is ready for market ; stop a second as
soon as the first tassel shows.

XVIII. Cereals. — Impress the fact that planting small grain
in weedy land is throwing away a part of the crop, because every
weed takes food that ought to go to the grain, and there is no
practical way of killing the weeds after the grain is sown.

Get each pupil to report the exact way his father treats his
grainfield. When is it plowed ? How deep ? How often is it
harrowed before planting ? How much seed is sown per acre ?
How much and what fertilizer is used ? What kind of a seeder
is used ? Is it rolled after seeding and in spring? At what stage
is it cut ? How is it harvested (stacked, or threshed from field) ?
You will be surprised how good a story your boys and girls can
tell of the wheat or other small grain. " Tiller " means to branch
at the surface of the ground.

XIX. In the Meadow. — Meadows and pastures are fields in
which grass is the crop raised. If the grass is cut for hay, the
field in which it grows is called a meadow. If animals are
grazed on the grass, the field is called a pasture.

149

As a rule the farmer cuts hay in the early summer, and when
the grass plants have started to grow again he turns his cattle or
sheep on the meadow for fall pasturage.

We must remember that the hay crop is made up of single
grass plants, the same as wheat, or corn, or cotton. There are
a great many more grass plants growing on an acre than corn
plants, and in the case of the grass each plant branches at the
ground or sends out runners, which so intermingle that it is hard
to pick out a single plant from its fellows. So we have come to
think of grass as a sod, or meadow, or pasture. Let us not for-
get, however, that dvery lawn and meadow and pasture is made
up of separate grass plants, each of which after a time will send
up flower stalks and will mature seed.

Meadows and pastures are grown for hay and for grazing. In
both cases the most useful part of the grass plant is the leaves.
If the seed is allowed to ripen before the grass is cut, the hay
will be much poorer in quality than if it were cut in the blossom.
Cattle will not do so well in grass that has gone to seed, as in
grass that is young. The reason is that almost all grass seed are
very small and quite hard, and are not digested by the animal that
eats them. We know that the seed contains stored food, which
was made in the leaves. If the grass is cut just as the buds begin
to bloom, most of this stored food will be contained in the stem
and leaves, and thus the animals feeding on the hay will get it
all.

If the farmer wants to grow grass for hay, he should cut it as
the first bloom appears. If he intends to thresh it, like wheat,
and sell the seed, he should cut it when the seed is all ripe, but
before it begins to fall.

The grass is a very delicate plant when it first sprouts, and
the wheat or oats protect it by growing more rapidly. It grows
slowly in the shade of the grain, but when the crop is cut, the
grass plants are strong enough to be helped by the full sunshine,
and by fall the meadow land can be grazed lightly. Meadow
land that is fertile and has a good water supply will yield good

ISO

hay crops for several years without reseeding. But each year it
is apt to get a little weedier, and it is best to put the meadow
land in regular rotation. Among the best meadow grasses are
timothy, redtop, and orchard grass. Where it can be grown,
red clover should always be mixed with the meadow grasses.
Meadows should always be plowed under when they become
weedy, and the best crop to plant in them, especially if clover
has been mixed with the grasses, is. corn or potatoes.

Rough land can often be more profitably used for pastures
than for cultivation. In mountain regions, if enough trees are
left to provide a light shade, blue grass makes a good permanent
pasture, especially if cottonseed meal forms a part of the cattle
feed, the sod improving with age. Early in the spring the entire
pasture should be harrowed to scatter the manure evenly over it.
In the South a good permanent pasture can be made of Bermuda
grass, which is one of the best soil binders, and is very useful
for preventing the washing of hillside lands. It is hard to get rid
of, and should be kept out of fields that are in regular rotation.

Have the pupils learn when the meadow at home was sown,
and bring to school as many different kinds of weeds as they can
find in the meadow ; also as many different grasses as they can
find. If you have any trouble in naming the grasses, send a
sample of leaf and flower or seed stalk to your university or ex-
periment station.

Have each pupil write a description of the way hay is made on
his home farm.

XX. Two Cousins. — One of the most important lessons in
plant culture is the fact that the plant is a machine for digesting,
storing, and using food. In youth the plant is constantly digest-
ing more food than it uses in growth, and this excess is stored up
in the stem, the root, or the leaf until the flowering and fruiting
comes. Plants bloom only when they have reached a certain ma-
turity, and the rapid development of flower arid seed is explained
by the great amount of stored food within the plant. In the cases
given, the bud (cabbage head) and root (turnip) are storehouses.

i5i

You know the peach blooms before there are any leaves on the
trees. All the material in the flowers was stored in the twigs the
year before. This explains also how all trees start to grow in
the spring — on food stored up the summer before. How very
necessary, then, to make the soil for crops rich, since well-
fed plants produce the heaviest crops.

Children can be greatly interested in this subject, and it is full
of lessons. The sprouting of seed depends on the store of food
within it. The starting of growth in the spring, fruitage — the
whole operation of plant growth — seems to center here.

Have the class report on different parts of plants used as
storehouses — Irish potato, sweet potato, cowpea, wheat, corn,
artichoke, gladiolus, mullein, burdock, timothy grass, etc. These
reports should be made after discovering an enlargement of
certain parts, as the tuber of the potato and the root of the mul-
lein weed before its flower stalk forms.

XXI. A Blanket Garden. — It is believed that the directions in
the lesson for making a hotbed are explicit. If you have no way
of getting money for sash (though almost any school can arrange
an entertainment for the raising of necessary funds) , try a similar
framed garden at school after the principal danger of frost is
past in spring. A board covering at night will be sufficient
protectibn. It will succeed better than a big school garden at first
because its small size will mean less work, and the entire class can
claim a share in it. Watch the watering. Water only when dry,
then give a soaking, and as soon as the surface is dry enough hoe
it or break the crust. Lift the sash every day to admit air, but
guard against frost on cold days. It will stimulate interest in
the patrons if you grow enough early tomato (variety Earliana)
plants to give each pupil a dozen or two for his home
garden.

XXII. Cuttings. — By all means have a box of sand in the
school window, if you cannot arrange a hotbed (blanket garden),
and have the pupils bring slips of geranium, heliotrope, coleus,
or any other plants. Take a box not more than four inches

152

deep. Place in it three inches of clean, sharp sand, and plant
the cuttings as described in the lesson. Keep the sand damp
and after ten days or two weeks pull up a cutting of each variety
to see if roots are forming — resetting at once. As soon as a
root shows one fourth inch long the cutting can be potted in a
rich sandy loam. In the schoolroom the pots had best sit in
shallow boxes of sand in a sunny window.

Have all the pupils make hard-wood cuttings of grapes and
such shrubs as spirsea, golden elder, crape myrtle, and the flow-
ering shrubs generally. These are to be made in the late fall or
winter, and will not begin to grow until the following spring. But
they grow so well that they are large enough to set in their
permanent places when one year old. Make blackberry and
horseradish root cuttings.

XXIII. Transplanting. — The value of transplanting is easily
illustrated in the case of potted plants. When soft-wood cuttings
are rooted, set them first in very small pots. In a month or six
weeks the roots will show against the sides of the pots (you can
turn the plant out of the pot by inverting the pot and giving it a
sharp tap on the edge of the table). Then set the plant in a
three-inch pot, packing a very little soil all around the ball of
earth with a stick, until the plant is firm. In a few weeks it will
need transplanting again. If you will leave a few geraniums in
three-inch pots, and transplant others successively into four, five,
and six inch pots, those in the three-inch pots will bloom soonest,
but the others will grow best.

If you have a school garden, try resetting shrubs or forest trees
when one, two, and three years old, and compare the roots with
those of trees that have not been reset. This exercise is espe-
cially valuable with walnut, hickory, and the oaks grown from
. seed.

XXIV. Rob's Garden. — In this story I have endeavored to
suggest what sympathy means to boys when they have irksome
tasks in hand. The story may be applied not only in the garden
but with book lessons as well.

iS3

One of the best exercises in this course is in connection with
this lesson : How large an amount of any garden or field crop
can be grown on a small (measured) area of land ? Can a boy
or a girl grow enough beets, beans, cabbage, corn, or any other
vegetable on one square yard of garden land to feed a family
one meal ? Try it with several vegetables — let us say lettuce,
beets, cabbage, tomatoes, and snap beans. That would require
a plat of land three by. fifteen feet in size. Explain to the class
how closely these plants can stand when mature : lettuce and
beets three inches apart, in rows twelve inches apart — but the
thinnings can be used, so drill close in the rows ; beans two
to three inches apart, in rows fifteen to eighteen inches apart ;
early cabbage eighteen inches apart, in rows eighteen inches
apart ; tomatoes three feet apart. Remind the class that a tomato
plant can be set in the center of the early cabbage, and of the
lettuce, beets, and beans ; so they can have four tomato plants
— or they can get two or more crops of lettuce. The problem
of how much crops can be grown from a small area can be
worked out in many ways, and is an interesting and practical
one. From the crop on his five square yards let the pupil
estimate how much might be grown on one acre.

XXV. The Orchard. — There are many lessons for boys and
girls in the way trees grow and bear fruit. Ask your class which
bears the more nuts, a walnut tree in an open field or one
closely surrounded by other trees. Why ? Which yields the
more useful timber, and why ? The trees in the open develop
a great crown, and of course nuts only grow out on the young
branches, so the more branches a tree can have, if they get light
enough, the more nuts it can produce. On the other hand, the
trunk of a tree is best for timber, because it has few knots and
is of large size. When trees grow close, their trunks are long,
the lower limbs being shaded out.

In their rivalry for light there is the same competition among
the branches of an orchard tree, or any other tree planted in
the open, that exists among the close-growing trees of a forest,

iS4

Prune out the weakest, or those tending crosswise of other limbs,
and you admit light enough for the full development of the
remainder.

Study frost localities. The cold air settles in the low places.
Often there is a frost at the bottom of the hill and none at the
top. This is especially important in choosing a location for
peaches. Children can observe frost phenomena as well as
adults. When the center of a fruit bud has turned black or
brown, it has been killed by frost. Often the peach crop will
have been killed even though there is heavy bloom, because
the petals of the flowers are hardier than the ovaries.

Above all, impress the idea that fruit is a crop, the same as
corn, and an orchard requires tillage the same as a cornfield.
That is why crops are planted between the trees — to insure
their cultivation, and to get some return from the land while the
orchard is too young to bear.

XXVI. The Grateful Plants. — It is the purpose of this story to
suggest how farmers may improve their crops by careful selec-
tion. In this work not only the seed, but the plant on which it
grows, should be observed, and only the best plants should be
saved for seed.

If earliness is the most important quality (as in raddish, lettuce,
etc.), the first plants to mature should be saved for seed, and only
their plumpest seed should be used. Selection can be made for
size, flavor, color, or any other quality.

Variability is a law of nature, and hardly any two plants are
exactly alike.

Have pupils select the largest ten heads of wheat they can
find in a field, the earliest cabbage in their home garden, or the
largest flower on their favorite plant, and save the seed for next
year's planting. Many practical exercises are possible.

NATURE STUDY

NATURE STUDY WITH COMMON

THINGS #0.60

By M. H. CARTER, Department of Elementary Science,
New York Training School for Teachers

THIS laboratory guide for pupils in the fourth, fifth, or
sixth years, takes up the blackberry, plum, pear, grape,
radish, potato, apple, apple blossom, lemon, orange,
onion, beet, carrot, pea, cranberry, straw-berry, and cherry.
Full directions and suggestive questions are given in connection
with the work. The specimens were chosen largely with
economy in view, and the entire book calls for the simplest
apparatus, the cheapest material. It asks only for school desks,
paper to cover them, knives and pins, pencils and paper.

WILD FLOWERS WHICH BLOSSOM IN
APRIL AND MAY

Prepared by ANNA BOTSFORD COMSTOCK, B.S.,
Lecturer on Nature Study in Cornell University. Per
copy, 2 5 cents. Per package of five pupils 1 books, : nclud-
ing one teacher's book, $1.25

THIS book includes the study of the Hepatica, Spring
Beauty, Adder's Tongue, Dutchman's Breeches, Squir-
rel Corn, Jack-in-the-Pulpit, and the Trilliums, and is
prepared on a somewhat novel plan, combining note-taking,
composition work, and drawing, for the third, fourth, and
fifth grades. For each flower there is a story which is in-
tended as a reading lesson, followed by two pages of questions
covering the complete physical description of the plant and
its habits; after each question there is a blank space for the
child's written answer. Two blank pages are left for a
summary in writing, and two for drawing.

AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY

(148)

NATURE STUDY

$0.40

By FRANK OVERTON, A.M., M.D., assisted by
MARY E. HILL, Instructor in Science and Nature
Study in the Goodyear Burlingame School, Syracuse, N. Y.

THIS book is designed to furnish a year's work in nature
study for pupils from eight to eleven years of age. The
subjects taken up are connected with everyday life, and
include the house fly, mosquito, butterfly, moths, mush-
rooms, dandelion, spider webs, golden-rod, golden-rod gall,
burdock, nest of a paper wasp, nest of a mud wasp, bird's
nest, tree trunk, cocoons, ice, snowflake, frost, pine tree,
pine leaves, pine cone, apple branch, apple fruit spur, earth-
worm, onion, maple seed, sprouting bean, maple bud, tad-
pole, water strider, duckweed, apple blossom, oak apple, and
clothes moth. These are arranged in the order of the
seasons, beginning with fall, but suggestions are given for
studying many of the specimens throughout their entire life
histories.

^[ The lessons throw light on unfamiliar sides of familiar
things, and afford a basis for future scientific studies, especially
along biological lines. They are correlated with drawing
and language in such a way that sketching and composition
writing may lead to closer observation of the specimens, and
that nature study may afford interesting and inspiring subjects
for expression with pencil and pen.

^| The use of the laboratory method throughout the book
arouses the enthusiasm of the pupil, because it gives him
something to do in which he is naturally interested. His
power and love of observation are developed, and the out-
door world takes on an added charm. The work is so
clearly outlined that the greatest success can be attained even
by teachers who have had no previous knowledge of the sub-
ject, provided only that they are learners with their pupils.

AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY

FIRST PRINCIPLES OF
AGRICULTURE

By EMMET S. GOFF, late Professor of Horticulture,
University of Wisconsin, and D. D. MAYNE, Princi-
pal, School of Agriculture, St. Anthony Park, Minn.

$0.80

MUCH experience has taught that if agriculture is made
the object of brain work, as well as of manual labor,
better farms, and better farmers, will be produced.
This book, therefore, is intended to present in a concise, prac-
tical manner for pupils in elementary schools, those funda-
mental principles upon which successful agriculture depends,
^f The farm is treated as the center of interest, and its in-
dustries, economies, and science are discussed at some length.
The book has been prepared with special reference both to
simplicity and to scientific accuracy, and is based on the
observation of the every-day facts of rural life, and on a system
of simple experiments well within the resources of any school.
^f The pupil is taught the reasons for the more important agri-
cultural operations, and the explanations of the phenomena
which accompany them. The soil and vegetation are first
taken up, including such important topics as the rotation of
crops, parasites of plants, seed testing, animals that destroy in-
sects, and the improvement of plants. Then follow chapters on
dairying, live stock, poultry, bee-keeping, and the improve-
ment of home and school yards.

^| At the end of each chapter is a summary of what has
been presented, furnishing in concise form definite state-
ments for the pupil to learn, and supplying to the teacher
a basis for drill, work. An extensive appendix contains, among
other useful information, fodder tables, a table of fertilizing
constituents in feeding stuffs, and sections on milk testing,
silage, contents of fields and lots, and quantities of seed
required to the acre.

AMERICAN. BOOK COMPANY

BOTANY ALL THE YEAR
ROUND

By E. F. ANDREWS, High School, Washington, Ga.

Edition with Flora . . . $1.50

Edition without Flora . . $1.00

THIS book has been prepared with the view to encour-
aging the study of botany in schools where it is now
neglected for want of a rnethod suited to their needs.
It is intended especially for schools not having a highly
organized system, of instruction, and can be used without
difficulty by teachers who have had no special training. For
the most part the experiments described are very simple, and
can be performed with homemade appliances within the reach
of any school. While the treatment is distinctly practical and
scientific, the language is simple and direct, and botanical
terms are introduced only as required.

^[ The lessons are arranged according to the seasons, so that
each subject will be taken up at just the time of the year when
material for it is most easily obtainable. The leaf has been
selected as the starting point, followed in turn by fruits,
seeds and seedlings, roots and underground stems, buds and
branches, and finally flowers. The chapter on ecology, the
studies of a few typical cryptogams, the practical questions at
the end of each topic, and the suggestions for field work at
the close of each chapter, form vital features.
^[ The Flora, which has been prepared especially for use in
connection with Andrews's Botany, gives descriptions of over
1 , 200 species, covering the flowering plants, wild and culti-
vated, which are most frequently seen in the eastern half of
the United States. Each plant is described. so exactly and
fully as to enable the beginner to determine readily and
accurately its genus and species. Because the Flora is brief,
it is easy to use, and does not discourage the young pupil with
a multitude and diversity of plants.

AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY

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Primary Physiology . . . $0.30 Intermediate Physiology #0.50

Advanced Physiology . . #0.80

OVERTON'S APPLIED PHYSIOLOGIES form a
series of text-books for primary, grammar, and high
schools, which departs radically from the old-time
methods pursued in the teaching of physiology. These books
combine the latest results of study and research in biological,
medical, and chemical science with the best methods of
teaching. >

^[ The fundamental principle throughout this series is the
study of the cells where the essential functions of the body
are carried on. Consequently, the study of anatomy and
physiology is here made the study of the cells from the most
elementary structure in organic life to their highest and most
complex form in the human body.

^[ This treatment of the cell principle, and its development
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the numerous original and effective illustrations, the clearness of
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logical, arrangement and gradation of the subject-matter, give
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^| The effects of alcohol and other stimulants and narcotics
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But while this important form of intemperance is singled out,
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is also a form of intemperance, and that the whole study of
applied physiology is to encourage a more healthful and a
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^[ In the preparation of this series the needs of the various
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AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY

(150)

Bwnuu Nat ure- Studyi

:v,mmL University. Ithaca, N. i

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