from a garden, and the natural way to do this would seem to be that they should themselves cultivate the things that they use in the Cooking Class. This would, of course, mean that the institutions for the training of teachers of domestic subjects would have to be provided with gardens. As far as we know this is very rarely the case at present. Cookery teachers who want to learn gardening have to go to Swanley, or elsewhere, for a course of instruction. The fact is that in our schools we are far too much given to cutting up the instruction into "subjects" with little or no communication with each other; the consequences are sometimes almost ridiculous. What we should like to see in this country is a generation of housewives who not only really can cook, but who can completely manage a garden of such a size that it supplies most of the vegetables and flowers that a workingman's house requires. When Lord Bacon said that "a garden is the purest of human pleasures, the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man," he was not, probably, thinking much of Woman. But he ought to have been. If all cities were garden-cities, all villages garden-villages and all housewives gardeners as well as cooks, this would be an infinitely happier world-especially for women.

A very determined demand is being made for the more extensive teaching of Science. Not less urgent is the necessity for an improvement in the methods of teaching it, and especially in the methods of instruction in the first stages. There has been a fashion of starting all such teaching by a series of lessons on measurement, volume, density, specific gravity, and so on. That can hardly be called an attractive approach to Science, and, however logical it may be, it is wholly unnatural. The garden offers a natural approach to science on several sides. Take Chemistry, for example. One cannot

go far in the cultivation of a garden before one begins to use chemicals. "Liming" is universally necessary. When the lime is being placed upon the garden a boy wants to know why. What is lime? How is it obtained? What does it do to the garden? Why is it called "quick" or "slaked"? All these things one really wants to know, and there is the teacher's opportunity for giving his lesson in Chemistry. Life is imparted to the study. Lessons are seen to have something to do with the practical affairs of life, and not to be merely "something out of a book." The chemistry of air and water, carbon and carbonic acid, nitrogen and nitrates, potash, sulphates, phosphates; sand, clay, iron; ammonia and its compounds; the phenomena of decomposition, solution, evaporation-all these arise as matters to be studied because of what is seen and done in the garden. It would be perfectly easy to prepare a syllabus of a first course in Chemistry that would arise out of the affairs of the garden, and for which the instruction could mainly be given on the ground.

The same may be urged with regard to Light and Heat. How is it that these are regarded as subjects to be studied, in the first case, indoors and without reference to any living thing? Their first importance lies in their influence upon, and necessity to the maintenance of, life and growth. How far can one go in a garden before some question of heat or light is met offering to the teacher an opening for exciting interest and imparting information? Here is a hand-light; why is it warmer under the glass than outside? Most people imagine that they know, but few do. This is the teacher's starting-point for a talk about the nature of heat and its transmission. Again, one must understand all about thermometers of all sorts if one is to be a gardener. Snow and soot raise the subjects of absorption

and conduction of heat. The effect of frost upon the soil, and the means of preserving plants from frost, demand scientific explanations. It is in the garden, too, that one should show the connection between light and life, light and color, temperature and evaporation, temperature and growth, and all such matters. If these things are approached in the first place as matters of life and death to plants and of success or failure for the gardener, there is some likelihood of their appearing to be worthy of attention. And after all it was in some such way as this that these subjects were first approached. We have too much cut off our teaching from actual things and made it an affair of words, so that science is a question of conjuring experiments and of examinations, and not at all connected with Nature. We teach about capillarity by means of little blocks of salt and sugar, in a classroom; but the practical importance of it lies in the soil, and it is not unconnected with the farmer's practice of rolling the ground and the gardener's use of the hoe.

We cannot help thinking that when we come to what is nowadays called Nature Study, and to Botany, a garden is quite indispensable. Here our school gardens have not been used at all as they should. In past years Botany has largely been learned by children in classrooms, from books and diagrams and dried specimens, and that even where a school garden was at hand. In a few cases it has been otherwise. Why should not elementary Botany be wholly a garden and outdoor subject? A considerable portion of the garden should be given up to small beds each planted with members of one Natural Order, or with plants selected to illustrate one or more definite points. For example, a bed may contain red, white, and alsike clover; peas, beans, and lentils; monkey-nuts, lupins, lucerne, vetches, sainfoin; and other Leguminosa,

Gorse, broom and laburnum will be found on the borders of the garden. Another bed may contain tomatoes, potatoes, tobacco, petunia, physalis, and other Solanacea. In the same way there will be beds of Labiates, Rosacea, Scrophulariacea, and the rest. Indeed, there are very few things mentioned in an elementary textbook of Botany that may not quite readily be grown in a fair-sized school garden. It must be better to study these things from the living, growing plant than in any other way. Pupils may learn for themselves by direct observation. What could be better, for instance, than to send pupils into a garden charged to find out the different ways in which plants climb? Bean, hop, clematis, nasturtium, ivy, virginia creeperall will be in the garden, and the pupils will visit each and make their own observations, reporting in words and in drawings.

Nowhere else is there so much opportunity for making children investigators. We want to stir up the spirit of inquiry; we want young people to devise experiments which shall answer questions; that is, we want to make them discoverers. A garden offers endless opportunities for this, especially if foresight is exercised when the planting is being done. Ask questions of this sort: Do the roots by which ivy clings to a wall feed the plant? Arrange an experiment to find out. At what rate does a sunflower grow? Can a hopplant be trained to climb round a pole in the same direction as a kidney bean? Which is better to use as seed-potatoes that are fully matured or immature ones? There is no end to the number of such inquiries; and the necessary experiments can be invented and carried out by the scholars themselves. Surely this is good teaching method. Nowhere else can the child be so readily led to wonder and to inquire, as in a garden.

We

There should, of course, be in every school garden a section devoted to plants of economic importance. could name a garden where fifteen little beds-perhaps each two square yards are sown each with a different useful grass; where wheat, barley, oats, rye, millet, maize, sugar-beet, flax, hemp, and mustard each have a place; where a series of small plots illustrates the rotation of crops; and where there is a small plantation with specimens of some thirty British forest trees. Of late there has been a good deal of talk about medicinal herbs; these should have a considerable plot in a school garden. A pond might often be provided, and aquatic plants grown and pond life studied; whilst in some places it should not be impossible to cultivate trout.

It is

The school garden gives rise to a demand for what the schools call "Manual Work." Often instruction is given in woodwork and metal work with little reference to any real necessity of life. Boys make models; why should they not make things. A man who can make his own frames, build his own poultry house, glaze a window, solder a watering can, and do all such jobs, is in an enviable position. worth much to have boys doing these things not as lessons or "specimens" or "models," but because they are wanted and are to be used. This is what we mean by making the work of a school depend upon, and arise out of, the garden. We really must try to bring the work done in our schools back into touch with reality; we must cease trying to be elaborate and get back to simple natural ways of doing things.

It will be seen that we are suggesting that the provision of school gardens, and some reform in the way of using them, would lead to more time being spent by teachers and children in the open-air of the garden. That would certainly be desirable. If it is good for the physically

defective to be sent to open-air schools it must be good for normal children to be out of doors. But what we are here concerned with is that it is educationally better, that better methods of teaching can be employed, that opportunities can more easily be made for co-operative or team-work, that self-discipline is far more easily arranged for, and that the natural restlessness of a child can be more readily turned to account. Especially we would emphasize the fact that in a garden work becomes "meaningful," "purposeful." How much better, for example, to measure one's own garden-plot and find its area, with and without the path, than to do a sum about it out of a book? How much better to see a square pole, or rood, or acre than merely to learn the words? How much more "sense" there is in keeping the accounts of your own garden than in dealing with some "made-up" figures! Or if you are to discuss rainfall; or maximum, minimum, and mean temperatures; or any kind of meteorology-how much more real it all is if you have taken the observations in, and made your charts and calculations with reference to, your own garden. "Summer Time" presents no difficulties to girls who have entered the revised figures upon the sun-dial in the school garden. Direction is quite clear when one has studied the weathervane in, and made an accurate map of, the garden in which your teacher discusses these things. It is really extraordinary, too, how large a proportion of what is done in the way of arithmetic in schools can be applied to, or begin to be studied in, the garden. Properly employed, a school garden is the very best classroom imaginable.

We referred above to the moral, æsthetic, and social influence that might be exerted by the school garden. This would seem to be evident. What would be the result if children from the slums of our big cities could receive

such education as they get in a school garden or garden school? The humanizing effect of such association with beautiful living things would be of untold value. And where will one learn patience, foresight, thrift, cleanliness, economy, and altruism so well? It is an unwritten law that in a garden one works "that he may have to give to him that needeth."

In a village the school garden might well become a center for a good deal of social intercourse. Boys and girls have their own plots to cultivate; fathers and mothers should be quite free to come and help out of school hours. There would be much more of sympathy between the school and the home if parents and teachers met casually on common ground with some common interest. Moreover, it is worth a good deal to get teachers associated with their scholars in this social and informal manner. The farmer might quite reasonably look to the school to do his seed-testing for him, nor need there be any great reluctance for help to be given to him in any time of emergency. The other month a certain small farmer was almost in despair about getting up his potatoes. In desperation he wrote to two large elementary schools near by, asking if they could help in any way. Now why should not the schoolmasters have taken a dozen boys each and given a day-Saturday perhaps to help with those potatoes? The school time usually given to physical exercises might well have been omitted that week, and, perhaps, also the time given to nature study. The boys would have had a lesson in patriotic altruism. But no; neither of the schoolmasters sent any reply to the man's appeal. That small-holder is not likely to feel very enthusiastic about the education rate.

We dare not take the children off the school premises, to the farmer's field or

the neighbor's garden wall. Yet this would certainly be the way to get people to believe in the schools and feel some interest in them.

Arithmetic, Geography, Botany, Nature Study, Drawing, Elementary Science-these are all subjects in which much of the work could be made to arise naturally out of the garden and be done in it. Other things, too, could be studied there. Sitting accommodation and shelter would make needlework and reading possible there; whilst a very large amount of literature could be, and ought to be, connected with the life of the garden and field. In every case the possession of a garden opens the way for new and better methods of teaching, and for more humane ways of handling a class. And what an opportunity these gardens would give for the holiday months! Of course, garden-schools would not be closed. There will be, in the new time, streams of children going out to them for holidays-real holidays, when happy and instructive hours are spent among bees and flowers, vegetables and fruit. There will be fruit-picking and jammaking, sleep and play, work and liberty. The girl who comes home from the great boarding-school loves and enjoys her home garden. For the dwellers in the congested areas, the school garden must take the place of the home garden till the latter is provided.

In the coming days we shall make all country schools garden-schools. We shall cease to build barrack schools in the congested areas of towns. Instead, a ring of large school gardens and garden schools will encircle the towns, and to these children will be carried by tram and train each day. Then, perhaps, a new spirit will arise in our country. A generation will come that will not be denied its right of access to the soil, a generation that knows Nature and loves her; an edu

cated generation, finding its pleasures and its profit in the beautiful. We may even return to that golden age The Contemporary Review.

66

'ere England's griefs began, When every rood of ground maintained its man."

J. Eaton Feasey.

Mankind would have been a complete fool but for a few occasional persons of true genius who have put some magical ideas into indurated customs and traditions. Democrats

turn with scorn from this truth, declaring that ordinary men, mere dough in human nature, should rule over genius, the enchanted yeast by which the dough is raised. But ordinary minds have ever been glad to pass from fact and truth into illusions, and many superior minds have ever been willing to use for their own ends the popular foolishness. True genius alone has been entirely candid, like Dame Nature, whose work, whether cruel or charitable, is always frank, and therefore without cant.

Though the gross body social will never be fit to rule with success over genius, the inspired brain, yet democrats may learn to govern themselves by choosing and obeying the most candid and thoughtful statesman. Instead of idolizing cant rather than gather hints from a Lord Roberts, they may become reasonable. At present, however, there are few signs that they and their chosen statesmen wish to think truthfully. Cant has come into vogue again, except among soldiers and sailors, who accept with pride the sternest autocrat, naval and military discipline, and gain candor from perilous duty.

Cant is to political affairs what poison gases have become to armed war, only it is more subtle than they are: no mask could neutralize it, and it gives no immediate pain. If it caused pain at once it would teach the people

to take care of themselves; but its painful effects arrive so late that they are attributed usually to other causes. For this reason cant is easy to revive. Its old devotees can chatter as foolishly as they did in the pre-war times and yet escape the chastisement which they invite. Already they are lodging themselves again in a bubble reputation for ideal wisdom and virtue. When major fools talk sweetly the minor fools are a devoted chorus.

Perhaps the best description of the ruling cant is a flattery of untruth that promises far too much with one voice and offers far too little with another. Though the human drama everywhere is played in competitions between inborn qualities and gifts which are never alike in weakness or in strength, cant promises to give all mankind perfect freedom and equal opportunities. With what results? Are millionaires and the poor to be canceled? No; millionaires are to thrive in the ideal world promised by political cant; they are to be acute politicians poetically in love with universal equality; they and the poor are to live together as perpetual cronies, exchanging birthday wishes and other mild salutations. For the poor will be forever satisfied with their lot because the humblest Bardolph among them will have the same voting power as a new Shakespeare Cant's emblem for ideal reform is a turtle lying on its back.

If cant were not altogether silly, if it blended untruth and good sense in half-and-half proportions, its appeals to human gullibility would become