s."

THE BEST USE OF ARBOR DAY.

Arbor Day, to be most useful as well as most pleasant, should not
stand by itself, alone, but be connected with much study and talk of
trees and kindred subjects beforehand and afterward. It should rather
be the focal or culminating point of the year's observation of trees
and other natural objects with which they are closely connected. The
wise teacher will seek to cultivate the observing faculties of the
pupils by calling their attention to the interesting things with which
the natural world abounds. It is not necessary to this that there
should be formal classes in botany or any natural science, though we
think no school should be without its botanical class or classes, nor
should anyone be eligible to the place of a teacher in our public
schools who is not competent to give efficient instruction in botany
at least.

But much may be done in this direction informally, by brief, familiar
talks in the intervals between the regular recitations of the
school-room, or during the walks to and from school. A tree by the
road-side will furnish an object lesson for pleasant and profitable
discourse for many days and at all seasons. A few flowers, which
teacher or pupil may bring to the school-room, will easily be made the
means of interesting the oldest and the youngest and of imparting the
most profitable instruction. How easy also to plant a few seeds in a
vase in the school-room window and to encourage the pupils to watch
their sprouting and subsequent growth.

Then it should not be difficult to have a portion of the school
grounds set apart, where the pupils might, with the teacher's
guidance, plant flower and tree seeds and thus be able to observe the
ways and characteristics of plants in all periods of their growth.
They could thus provide themselves with trees for planting on future
Arbor Days, and at the time of planting there would be increased
enjoyment from the fact that they had grown the trees for that very
purpose.

Why might not every school-house ground be made also an arboretum,
where the pupils might have under their eyes, continually, specimens
of all the trees that grow in the town or in the State where the
school is situated? It would require but a little incitement from the
teacher to make the pupils enthusiastic with the desire to find out
the different species indigenous to the region and to gather them, by
sowing seeds or planting the young trees, around their