This has long been a query in our own and probably in the minds of many others, and we are very glad that some are beginning to speak out on the subject, in the hope that speaking will arouse action, while vigorous action will, we have no doubt, solve the problem and say it is done - very successfully taught.

But why is it not taught now? Certainly not because the individuals in these schools lack in disposition and ability to study those branches. The love of nature and all her works is not one of the lost attributes of man, following his expulsion from Eden. Who ever saw an infant that was not attracted and pleased by the gaudy colors of flowers or the glowing beauties of fruit; or that was not attracted by the hum of animated nature, - by the leaves trembling in the summer breeze, or the swaying of naked branches in the rough blasts of winter 1 It is an inborn principle of our nature to love and admire these, and when we cease to cultivate these principles and let other objects assume the position they have occupied, we enter upon an artificial state of existence, often full of yearnings for beautiful and quiet days, like those from which we are so estranged.

This love of nature does not leave us with the fleeting days of infancy. In youth we see it develop itself in stronger and more forcible illustrations. Planting, transplanting, sowing, nurturing, and harvesting then come in, and the desire for new creations of natural beauty causes the hands to labor for the gratification of the mind. We see it in little cultivated patches, in secluded nooks around the homesteads; we see it around the district school-house, - and among the recollections of our earliest school-boy days, there are none pleasanter than those when the corners of the old Virginia fence, near the old brown school-house, were farmed out among the juveniles for special cultivation, and brought into culture with such primitive tools as school-boys could manufacture, and such crops were started as school-wisdom dictated. Oh! what sadness has come over us, as some unlucky morning, when our crops had well advanced in growth, to look upon their ruin. But such sorrows were only for a season. The opening of another spring would cause fresh inspirations of hope to spring up in the youthful mind, and the labor was cheerfully gone through with again to end in the same disheartening results.

Some vagrant animal would come by night and transform our hopeful fields to barren fallows.

This was nothing peculiar to us, to our school or to our day. We have seen the children of each successive generation, and of localities almost innumerable, acting and reacting in scenes like those we cherished, and at present we see no probability of the course being abandoned.

It may safely be inferred then that there is no lack of material to educate in horticultural knowledge in our common schools, and no obstacle in the way on the part of the material, of moulding it into the noblest forms of science and practice. A little teaching, drawing out of this natural taste, would be a great service in the matter, and probably greatly increase the numbers as well as the knowledge of cultivators. Why are they not taught in common schools?

In the first place, then, we have no teachers competent to the work; education and habit lead them to look upon this matter as too small a one to come within their notice. Young men who teach are for the most part preparing for other professions, and their school-houses must be devoted to sciences in which they are more familiar, old stereotyped affairs, while the hours out of school must all be devoted to pleasure or the studies prefatory to some other pursuit. Many of our common schools are taught by females, like the daughter of a worthy and successful farmer we once knew, who almost fainted because ploughshare was said in her presence. She-would probably have gone quite off, but for the admitted fact that she did not know what it was.

Our young lady teachers, unlike the young ladies of other lands, have more important communings than those with nature, to claim their attention. But the fault does not rest mainly that we have not teachers to instruct in rural arts. Parents and guardians have not yet acknowledged the estimation that should be given to an enlightened system of cultivation. If they would do so, and if the State would make it as imperative that teachers should instruct, or be capable of instructing, in some of the branches of rural arts, as it does that they shall be qualified to teach algebra and physiology, the time would be short before we should have teachers ready to commence; and our normal schools, so dependent on agricultural patronage for existence, and so full of philanthropy towards the rising generation, would have their experimental grounds, and their cabinets of natural history, their text-books and lectures, to prepare these teachers for a new and attractive enterprise.

We have long been of the opinion that the common schools should be made a nursery in which horticulture and its kindred arts should be kindly nourished. Let such an education be encouraged at home and fostered in these institutions, and the young cultivators of American soil would act from an intellectual impulse that would not cease when school-days were ended. The rills of knowledge poured into the mind there, would create a thirst that would be satisfied only by new and oft-repeated draughts of knowledge in all after-time.

Then how soon we should hear a call coming up from all the people in one united voice, too strong to be stifled with apathy, Give us higher and better endowed institutions all over the land, which is ours; wherein we, our sons and our children's children to all time, can learn the arts of nature, and successful cultivation of her healthful, luxurious, and life-sustaining products. Hitherto we have yielded our known rights to the advancement of other objects. From the earliest period of our country's history legislative aid has been granted in munificent sums for the support of institutions to advance men in other professions. To carry out these grants we have been taxed, and without complaint have given of the substance of our toil to favor these objects. In the trying hour that severed our country from foreign power, our fathers in a mass arose, left their rude ploughs in the furrow, and hastened to the fields of blood and carnage to drive the foe from our snores. The blood of our ancestors was spilled to give our country a place among nations. The funds have been liberally bestowed to make this an enlightened nation. We have neglected ourselves and our profession, to establish other institutions upon permanent and successful bases.

We feel now, that the time has fully come when educational aid should be given to us as a professional class on whom the prosperity of the country is very intimately connected. We strongly urge our claims, and shall never be satisfied until they are cancelled.

What a beautiful era it will be in the history of our country, when the sciences of earth-culture are introduced and successfully taught in our common schools I Then all the energy of cultivators will be awake in the study of natural causes and effects, as they operate on the art that feeds and beautifies the world.

One preliminary step has been taken to carry out this object. Our school-houses, instead of being located in cramped and useless spots, and set about three feet off the public highway, are being built with spacious grounds, the scholar's farms around them. Let these grounds be beautifully laid out, and planted under the eye of the scholar; and then let their future keeping be entrusted to the scholar, under the watchful care of the teacher. Gardens of beautiful trees, luscious fruits, and blushing flowers would then embellish these humble seminaries of learning, and a taste would be cultivated there to go forth to beautify and enrich the whole earth.