Should Horticulture be Taught in our Public Schools ? - This question was ably handled by Professor Wickersham, late Superintendent of Public Instruction of the State of Pennsylvania, at the late State Horticultural meeting. Objection was made that studies were now too numerous for the six hours a day, and six or eight months in the year of public schooling, but the Professor explained that he did not recommend the introduction of this and similar studies in addition to those already included, - but in the place of some others. He contended that, as the result of a careful study of public education, that a large proportion of time spent on geography, grammar, examples, and so forth, was absolutely thrown away, - that the aim of public education should not be so much to educate as to place children on the path to educate themselves. Public school teaching should simply furnish children with the tools by which they could cleave their own way as circumstances should arise, and not to fit them for any particular way. Children should be taught to observe, to think, and to judge.

He would have a garden attached to every public school, and take the hour spent on geography or grammar, and, with the children in the garden, with the living plants before them, and a teacher capable of explaining things, do more good than the book studies of a whole week. The remarks of the Professor made a deep impression.