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Here is another plan.

"I have in my desk a bottle with a very large mouth. The body of the bottle is a cylinder whose diameter is three inches, and whose length is four and a half inches.

The neck is like a circular plinth, two inches in diameter, and one in height. The glass at the mouth of the bottle is nearly a quarter of an inch thick.

Now let us all close our eyes and make believe we can see the bottle. What is the front view? What is the top view?

I shall give you fifteen minutes in which to draw two views of my bottle. I wonder how many will get it right!"

If an exercise like this proves too difficult for the class, draw one view for them on the blackboard and have them supply the other. You see our instruction in working drawing has been under four heads.

1. Drawing from models to teach principles.

2. Diawing from objects to apply principles.

3. Drawing from sketches or illustrations to develop thought and test knowledge of principles.

4. Drawing from description to strengthen the imagination. Encourage the little people to make in their sketch-books, two views of simple objects at home, illustrating the principles studied. You will secure some good material for future use in this way, and help your pupils in independent thinking.

Devices for History Reviews.

Cut out a neat slip of card-board and write upon it a brief sketch of the life of some historical character. Do not mention his name, and leave the place for the title blank. Give a slip to each pupil and require him to fill the blank.

Have the pupils each write a description of some noted man. Let one pupil read, pausing at the end of every paragraph to let the others guess. Let the one that guesses right read next. ANNA MCLANAHAN. Sacramento Co., Cul.

D

URING the winter and early spring a study of the native trees may easily be undertaken. A very simple outline only is necessary. The teacher need not wait to be fully equipped himself before beginning, because his pupils by their observations will put him in possession of much information about trees that he could not derive from books.

The order of study may be as follows:

1. The tree as a whole-shape, size, mode of branching,
characteristics of bark, (on trunk and on branches.)

2. Leaves, (from collections made in the autumn)
shape, veining, etc.,

position, arrangement.

3. Buds in winter, -arrangements, coverings, amount of growth during summer.

4. Wood-hardness, color, markings. Prepare cross, radial and tangential sections for study.

After studying the deciduous trees of the neighborhood during the winter, a seventh year class was given, in the early spring, the evergreens to report upon. Each pupil was assigned a particular species and directed to examine it in as many different localities as possible, isolated, in clumps, in cultivation, in the forest. Specimens were to be collected to substantiate the statements made.

In addition to the general outline, the following specis directions were issued by the teacher as a guide.

BARK. Is the outside of the bark rough or smooth? Notice scal s-furrows- blisters if any. Color. Get off carefully some of the bark. Does it come off in shreds, fibres, e c.? Do any of the trees studied shed their bark with age? Notice thickness of bark (comparative).

WOOD. Find out whether the wood is hard, soft, pithy, light, heavy, durable, valuable, etc. Is there any odor? Notice heartwood, sap-wood, fibres. Specimens - outside of bark-inside of bark three different cuts of the wood.

From the observations made in accordance with these directions the following essays were prepared by girls of the seventh year class.

[These essays were generously illustrated by the pupils with pencil drawings of the leaves, cones, scales, sections of the various woods, etc., but our limited space prevents our reproducing them here.- ED.]

The White Pine is cone-shaped tapering towards the apex. It is in this shape because in the winter when it snows heavily the snow slides off of it. If it was reversed and the largest part at the top, the snow would make it top-heavy and the tree would be broken. It is a very large tree, in some of our great forests they sometimes grow to the height of 150 ft.

The White Pine has a straight trunk visible to the top of the tree. This is called an excurrent trunk. There are other kinds of trunks which are lost before reaching the top. These are called deliquescent trunks.

The branches begin quite near the ground and grow in a horizontal position. They are usually in a ring or whorl around the trunk of the tree.

The leaves of the White Pine are simple, they grow in bundles with little or no sheath. Each leaf is needle-shaped, about three inches long, very slender and soft. This is an evergreen tree.

The White Pine cones were the blossoms of the tree once, and are about 4'x3' in size. They are brown when young but as they grow old they turn grayish-brown and are slightly curved. When they open the scales straighten out, but do not fall apart. Each scale is triangular with the lower end a great deal thicker than the upper part. The edge is sharp without any prickles at the apex. The seed is found under the scales. They are quite small but have large gauzy two-parted wings. When the cone opens the wind catches the wings of the seed and blows it away to different places and so the trees get distributed in this way.

The outside of the bark of the White Pine is very smooth. There are small blisters on it sometimes. It is a grayish-green color. You can peal it off in solid sheets. The White Pine has a comparativly thin bark.

The White Pine wood is soft, not very pitchy, light and valuable but not very durable. It has a sweet odor. The heart-wood looks like a little knot of a darker color than the sap-wood. The White Pine wood is used for floors, doors, window-frames and fire-wood. The most valuable part of the White Pine tree is the wood. It is used mostly for fire-wood and the wood-work of the inside of houses, and musical instruments are made from it.

It belongs to the Cone-bearing family, and is called White Pine, Weymouth Pine or Sighing Pine. It is called Sighing Pine because (as the legend says) it used to grow on a far off island where it was very happy with the ocean all around it, but the wind was jealous and blew the seed over to foreign countries, and it's singing was changed to sighing.

The White Pine will grow in almost any kind of soil, mostly in great forests.

Meary Duffy
Mattapan School.

The shape of the Spruce is conical, that is, it is large at the bottom and slants to a point at the top. It is made so that it will protect the tree in a storm. They grow mostly to the height of eighty or more feet and this is very high compared with some Evergreen trees.

It has a very straight trunk and it is called an excurrent trunk because it grows up to the top of the tree.

The branches begin quite near the ground and grow in a drooping position. They grow regularly from the trunk and opposite each other.

The leaves of the Spruce are simple because they are entire and not made up of leaflets. They are indeterminate in position because they grow crowded together. The leaves of the Spruce grow singly upon all sides of the branch.

It has a linear shaped leaf which is very long and narrow. It is stiff and slightly curved. The point is blunt. It is stout for its size. It is four-sided with a groove in the top face and on the other face is a ridge.

The cones of the Norway were once small blossoms. They are very large, even larger than the cones of other Evergreen trees. These cones grow singly and they grow near the top of the tree. They hang mostly in a drooping position from the branches. The color of them is light brown but when they grow old the color changes to a darker brown. The scales when open form a main stalk which is in the middle of the cones and they do not fall apart when old. The scale is almost triangular in shape and it is very thick and tough. The edges are very sharp and at the apex are small teeth. In these scales the seed is found. The seeds have little leaves or wings on them which help to carry the seed to the ground. When one first looks at the seed it looks like the seed of the Pig-nut tree or the Maple.

On the lower part of the trunk of the Norway Spruce the bark is scaly and comes off in large pieces. On the upper part of the trunk the bark is rough but it is not so scaly and does not come off in such large pieces as the lower bark. The color of this bark is brown and in some places you can see very plainly a reddish tint. When the bark is fresh it comes off easily but when old it breaks and you cannot pull it off as easily. The bark on the trunk of the tree is quite thick.

The wood of the Norway Spruce is not as hard as Soft Pine and is not as sticky. This wood is quite light and is used a great deal. The heart-wood is softer than sap-wood and is shown by a dark spot.

The wood of the Norway Spruce tree is very valuable. From it are made floors, shingles and particularly the masts of ships. It is not used for fuel here because it is used as an ornamental tree. Spruce gum is got from the sap of this tree.

This tree belongs to the Cone-bearing Family. It is called Norway Spruce because it was first brought from Norway where it grows very thickly.

Spruce trees grow in almost any soil and grow very well in the Sub-Artic Zone.

A better work on botany for children than FAIRYland of FLOWERS is not in the market. It abounds in helpful illustrations, short stories and poems; and it should be in the hands of every pupil and teacher. When we went to the public schools there were no such entertaining lessons. Oh no, the three R's were pored over more than anything else, and they were given in such a severe way that many pupils did not find pleasure in studying them. W. HAMILTON TILL.

T all began with a branch of hemlock brought to school one bright, sunny morning. The slender little needles, pinnately placed, caused much admiration, and the dark green of last year's growth contrasted well with the delicate green of this spring's new needles.

But when we began to ask the name and habits of the plant very few replies came. To most it was a piece of evergreen or a bit of pine. We were surprised at our own ignorance. The evergreens are so unassuming, so distant and reserved, and yet as constant that we pass them by as something not within our sphere, and turn to the more gaudy and changeable trees, neglecting the ones that are as faithful in cold winter as in summer.

Hemlock was to many an unknown word. Some remembered that in former years their older brothers had made yearly pilgrimages into Michigan, bringing back wagons loaded with the graceful drooping branches of the Hemlock, diffusing a pungent odor of the piny woods. These beautiful greens were converted into festoons for commencement day.

Some knew that a forced drink of the poison hemlock brought Socrates to his death. This thought brought forth the information that it is not this hemlock that is poisonous but a smaller variety (conium) and the small water hemlock. These are very poisonous. Later in the year we found the tiny cones clustered on the slender branches; and when the snows of winter came and covered our trees we thought of Longfellow's

66

'When the snowflakes, whirling downward,
Hissed among the withered oak leaves,
Changed the pine trees into wigwams,
Covered all the earth with silence."

We found other poems, legends and stories of the hemlock and eagerly told and learned them.

We were not satisfied with knowing the hemlock only of all the evergreens. A little enthusiasm is like leaven it lightens so much. We now were eager to know all the evergreens. We were surprised at the number of relatives belonging to the pine family. We of course knew the familiar white pine, the tallest, largest and most common member of the pine family. We learned to know its long light-green needles in clusters of five and its long, narrow cones growing pendant. We saw it standing tall and majestic, a silent monitor always pointing toward God. And as we stood silently before some of these grand cloud-crowned pines we felt with Irving that "as the leaves of trees absorb all noxious gases in the air, and give us a purer atmosphere to breathe, so they take

away from us all sordid and angry thoughts and fill us with peace and goodwill." And with Whittier we said

"Green be these hillside pines forever."

We took long trips to the pine woods where the soil was dry and sandy and the pine tree grows to a very great height, and we did not wonder that the pine has been called the king of the hills and likened to a "mighty warrior lifting high his haughty head and sending down the wind his battle cry."

We saw this pine in all its many phases.
We found Longfellow's

"Dark pine, blasted, bare and cleft."

Lay the snow,

They fell, those lordly pines!

Those grand majestic pines!

'Mid shouts and cheers

The jaded steers

Panting beneath the goad,

Dragged down the weary winding road
Those captive kings, so straight and tall,
To be shorn of their streaming hair,

And naked and bare

To feel the stress and the strain

Of the wind and the reeling main,
Whose roar

Would remind them forever more

Of their native forests they should not see again."

How vivid it was and how we loved and pitied those mighty pines.

We found legends of the pine tree. We read that the presence of the pine tree in America is due to a traveler who saw a young pine singing with its happy brothers in its far off woodland home. Thinking he had never seen as pretty and musical a tree before, the traveler gently and carefully lifted it and carried it across the great ocean to our own country. But the little pine was lonesome and longed for its companions so that its singing was turned to sighing and always now we think of it as a mournful tree.

The pine tree itself tells us: "Long, long ago I had my home on an island in the ocean and was very, very happy, but the jealous winds blew my life germs away from me and when they sprang up again it was on a far distant soil." Always when the winds blow gently or roughly the spirit of the pine sobs and wails, homesick for its home and longing for the waves.

The yellow or Georgia pine we did not find as it grows in the country south of us, especially along the Atlantic coast from the Carolina's southward. It is a smaller tree and its timber is harder and tougher than the white pine and is much used in ship-building and for the interior work in houses. Its yellow wood, charged with such an abundance of wealth bringing sap makes a very ornamental timber especially when twisted and knotted in the

fantastic way peculiar to it. From this tree vast quantities of pitch, tar, turpentine and resin are obtained. It has dainty, slender needles and pointed cones wickedly covered with sharp prickles. It is of this pine Lowell says

"Under the yeller pines I house

When sunshine makes them all sweet scented,
And hear among their furry boughs

The baskin' west wind purr contented."

The distinctive foliage of the pine makes it hard to sympathize with the rebellious little pine tree who murmured

"I am clad in needles,

Hateful things," he cried,

"All the trees about me

Laugh in scornful pride;

Broad their leaves and fair to see;
Worthless needles cover me."

and wished for leaves of burnished gold, waked to find them
"budded on his crown." His joy lasted until a thief stole his
treasure away. Then his fancy turned to "leaves of crystal
glass," which the gentle fairies gave him.
"How his blazing crystals
Lit the morning air

Then a driving storm did pass,

All his leaves were shattered glass." Then the wretched pine tree Cried in deep despair, "Would I had my needles, They were green and fair; Never would 1 change them" Sighed the little tree; "Just as Nature gave them

They were best for me,

Then he slept, and waked and found

All his needles safe and sound."

The red pine with its blunt cones and long needles in twos we found occasionally as an ornamental tree. It is frequently called the Norway pine, but why, it is hard to say as it is found only in North America. This pine is used much for ornamental purposes. It has a harder timber than the white pine but is a slow grower. It is used largely for charcoal.

The little scrub pine was very easy to find. Perhaps it is in recompense for its scraggly appearance that it has so many names. It is called gray-pine, Jack-pine, buckwheat-pine, black-pine, and crocodile-pine. We found little scraggly specimens struggling along with the larger trees of the forest, and holding their own with a tenacity worthy of greater results, as they grow only from fifteen to forty feet high. We carefully dug up small specimens of this pine and transplanted them into our own gardens, that in after years they might remind us of our pleasant excursions to "where the sombre pines arise," but they did not take kindly to their new surroundings and, one and all, died.

The larches, firs and spruces became familiar friends. What an interest there was in distinguishing the spruce from the fir. The spruce was a great favorite-perhaps because of visions of Christmas trees and memories of spruce gum in its original form packed in miniature barrels of its own wood. The spruce has a trim, sprightly appearance greatly in its favor. It is a wholesome, independent tree. It does not have the straggling appearance of many of its fellow swamp dwellers. That of late years its wood has been largely used in the manufacture of paper was an item of interest.

We found the balsam fir with its flat needles and honey-like juice oozing out through its bark and often called Canada balsam or balm of Gilead. This juice mixed with turpentine is much used for mounting objects for the microscope. It also makes a good varnish. When we turned to Hiawatha we found

"Give me of your balm, O Fir-Tree!
Of your balsam and your resin,
So to close the seams together
That the water may not enter
That the river may not wet me!"
And the Fir-Tree, tall and sombre,
Sobbed through all its robes of darkness,
Rattled like a shore with pebbles,
Answered wailing, answered weeping,

"Take my balm, O Hiawatha!"

And he took the tears of balsam
Took the resin of the Fir-Tree,

Smeared there with each seam and fissure,
Made each crevice safe from water."

We found the little juniper with its silvery needle-like foliage growing sturdily and bravely among its other relatives, and hugging tightly its trunk with its small uplifted branches as if always aspiring higher.

We were glad to know the larch, called by our southern cousins, tamarack, and given by New England people the queer name, hackamatack. Like the spruce and pines it is much used for ship building, and railroad ties are made of it. We delighted in its graceful foliage and pretty cones. In the spring when "the larch has hung all its tassels forth" it is a beautiful sight. We turned again to our cherished Hiawatha and there we found

"Give me of your roots, O Tamarack!

Of your fibrous roots, O Larch-Tree!

And the Larch with all its fibres,

Shivered in the air of morning,

Touched his forehead with his tassels, Said with one long sigh of sorrow, 'Take them all, O Hiawatha.'

The arbor vitae

tree of life with its flat foliage

flat as if pressed for longer keeping, and its tiny, scale-like cones were well known to us. We found many hedges and ornamental trees, some we were sorry to see-cut into such distorted shapes as Nature in her fiercest moods would never have inflicted upon us. It is not at all strange that even small children who have been taught to observe and love Nature and her ways, should strongly disapprove man's attempts to improve upon her by changing her trees into scissored lions, birds and urns.

The cedars, red and white, were very rare. We took many a long tramp before we were rewarded. But when we found them and felt

winds

That shake the leaves and scatter as they pass,

A fragrance from the cedars, thickly set
With pale blue berries. (Bryant.)

we felt amply repaid.

The leaves, some needle-pointed and some old and scale-like, gave forth a delicious odor. The wood, red and white, we knew was rich in its own peculiar fragrance — dear to us but dreaded by insects and on that account used for clothes chests and closets. It was long before we sharpened a lead pencil without inhaling the odor of the newly cut wood. Among the cedars we saw

"The sobered robin, hunger-silent now,
Seek cedar-berries blue, his autumn cheer."

and again Longfellow gave us

"With his fishing line of cedar,

Of the twisted bark of cedar.' 99

We read of the cedars of Lebanon and Florida cedar, a kind of mahogany of which cigar boxes are made.

66

Our excursions formed the subject for many beautiful language exercises. We hunted for and learned poems of the evergreens and it was surprising how many we found wh n once our attention was turned to them. In the search for these poems and bits of prose we found many other beautiful thoughts that were eagerly preserved. We prepared a good dictation lesson from Ruskin's thought: The tremendous unity of the pine absorbs and molds the life of a race. The pine shadows rest upon a nation. The northern people, century after century, lived under one or the other of the two great powers of the pine and the sea, both infinitive. They dwelt amidst the forests, or wandered on the waves, and saw no end or any other horizon. Still the dark green trees, or the dark green waters jagged the dawn with their fringe or their foam, and whatever elements of imagination or of warrior strength, or of domestic justice were brought down by the Norwegian or the Goth against the dissoluteness or degradation of the

south of Europe were taught them under the green roofs and wild penetralia of the pine."

We loved the dainty little lines

"If Mother Nature patches the leaves of trees and vines,
I'm sure she does her darning with needles of the pines,
They are so long and slender and sometimes in full view,
She has her thread of cobweb and thimble made of dew."
From Bayard Taylor's 'Spirit of the Pine' we got:
"She with warm fingers laced in mine did melt
In fragrant balsam my reluctant blood;
And with a smart of keen delight I felt
The sap in every bud,

And tingled through my tough old bark, and fast
Pushed out the younger green, that smoothed my tones,
When last year's needles to the wind I cast

And shed my scaly cones."

But our dearest treasure was Hiawatha. This may not be Longfellow's greatest poem, but it is the one dearest to the hearts of the children. Even the little ones love it. Its melody and its beautiful thoughts and legends appeal to them all. It is a great help during a mechanical lesson. A room full of children, busy with paint-brush, drawing-pencil or cardboard, will be eagerly quiet listening to the beautiful words of this poem.

We found this poem rich in references to our evergreens, but our greatest delight was Hiawatha's Sailing. This we learned from beginning to end. Naturally this delight gave rise to a desire to know other of the works of the 'children's poet' and was the beginning of a literary interest that may last a lifetime.

We had lessons on pitch and turpentine, ships and masts, shingles and fence-posts, pencils and paper, resin and tar, logging and lumber camps.

One Friday afternoon we presented a program devoted wholly to this subject which had so interested us. Our songs, essays, recitations were all about the evergreens. These Friday afternoon exercises are especially helpful when devoted to one particular subject and are much more interesting than a promiscuous program.

Just at this time a box was sent to us from a friend living in Virginia. This contained beautiful specimens of the different evergreens found on Natural Bridge. The delight of recognizing our new tree friends and the desire to preserve them led to the preparing of mounted specimens.

Owing to the habit of the dry needles dropping off this was somewhat difficult, but was finally overcome by carefully splitting the bark down the back of the specimen and taking out the woody interior. The bark was then flattened and with each needle covered with a good mucilage the specimen was allowed to dry under pressure, care being taken not to let any of the mucilage adhere to the weight placed above it.

Large squares of stiff cardboard were used. On these were pasted in addition to the branch of evergreen, the cones when obtainable and thin sections of the wood. The larger cones were cut in two vertically. We had both the horizontal and vertical sections of the wood. Some of these were quite successfully polished, and the rings of growth were well brought out. The Georgia pine was so full of resinous sap that a coat of shellac or wax was necessary to keep it from oozing out.

These cards contained other forms of the tree also. On the spruce card was a bit of the spruce gum a piece of spruce pulp paper. On the hemlock card was a bit of tanning bark. The Georgia pine card contained not only specimens of tar and resin, but a tiny bottle of turpentine. The blue powder-covered berries of the cedar adorned its card, to which was fastened a tiny lead pencil.

Quotations concerning our trees were neatly written on the cards with here and there a thought from some great man.

A second card was prepared by some of the most enterprising, for each tree. This card was devoted to drawings, paintings and sketches appropriate to the tree. One pretty thing was some