SECOND YEAR OF THE INTERMEDIATE COURSE.

The plan to be followed is essentially the same as in the first year. The program is completed as follows:

1. Ideas of science.-The study of combustion should extend to that of carbonic acid gas, which should be proved to exist in calcareous rocks. Some lime and a few

A good way to make these lessons profitable is to arrange and paste the different parts of the flower analyzed on a piece of paper, explaining the natural forms by means of a diagram. The foregoing illustration is an exact reproduction of a page in the copy book of a child eleven years old.

drops of a mineral acid suffice for the following experiments or demonstrations. Convert the lime into quick-lime (the stove in the class-room will furnish sufficient heat for all the pupils to convince themselves); demonstrate the loss of weight by comparison with another piece of limestone similar to the first; observe the action of water on quicklime and properties of slack-lime, and whiting-size and lime

water; produce carbonic acid gas (see fig. 9), and let the pupil reconstruct the limestone in theory and practice.

The mechanical separation of vegetable earth (A) into clay (B) on the one hand and silex and limestone (C) on the other is a matter of little difficulty. A little hydrochloric acid will dissolve the carbonate of lime; the silex (D) can then be

separated; the carbonate of lime (E) can finally be regenerated by means of a solution of carbonate of soda. This experiment is easily explained and requires little care to be conveniently carried out. It is advisable to preserve the results and note them down on a card, as shown in fig. 10.

2. Ideas of agriculture.-Examination of the principal kinds of soil, especially during walks. Children should be taught to observe that plants, like animals, require nourishment. For this purpose a few growing plants in pots or garden plots are needed. The following experiment is the first in order. Sow some seeds of rap

idly growing plants-early beans, for instance. (Fig. 11.)

In the pot to the left exhausted soil without manure is used. In the pot to the right good soil, with a sufficient quantity of manure added, is used. The necessity of manure will be thus demonstrated. The knowledge of its composition follows

later on.

The first ideas of common agricultural implements and labor are best gained during walks. They are developed in the more systematic lessons referred to in the programme of the advanced course.

Strictly speaking, the advanced course is rarely organized in rural schools. Ordinarily, the oldest or more advanced pupils form what may be called a higher division of the intermediate course. However the case may be, the rule to be observed is as

follows:

Children of 12 or 13 years of age should receive more advanced instruction in agriculture than that which is indicated in the programme of the intermediate course. For the largest pupils the teacher should add to what has preceded all that he can add of the following programme, the application of which will present no serious difficulty, provided ideas of fundamental science have been established by means of simple experiments in the class room and in observation of nature.

ADVANCED COURSE.

(Children 11 to 13 years of age.)

The ideas from physical and natural science presented in this course are, first, an extension of those of the intermediate course. The extension bears essentially on facts of hygiene as applied to man and domestic animals, on ideas of vegetable physiology, and on some clements of organic chemistry. The subjects of lessons are defined for each semester, the natural and physical sciences being confined to the winter and taught in parallel lessons so as to correlate.

First semester.—(1) Animals.-The distinguishing traits of classification should be defined by means of examples taken as far as possible from among native animals,

either useful or destructive, according to preference. Domestic animals naturally rank first. The facts upon which rules of hygiene and the feeding of cattle are based should be considered above all other things.

A study of the principal organs may be facilitated by the direct observation of a dead animal. Some teachers know how to prepare the digestive apparatus of smaller animals, and even skeletons, by means of which the school museum is enriched. Their example deserves commendation.

(2) Man.-The ideas of anatomy should be primarily directed toward convincing children of the necessity of the rules of hygiene. They bear essentially on digestion, circulation, respiration, and the relation of the senses to the nervous system. Exaggeration should be avoided. All recipes, more or less empiric, are not to be confounded with hygiene, still less with medicine, and should be omitted.

(3) Physics.-The experiments necessary are simple and cheap. This part of the programme should be developed, particularly in cities and industrial centers. In the country demonstrations may be confined to proving the principal effects of heat, light, electricity, and gravitation. In this case it is of importance to excite the children's curiosity and to select examples from among phenomena easily reproduced or observed; others should not be mentioned unless the first series be exhausted. Some ideas of meteorology are necessary. Children should become familiar, not with the construction of the barometer and thermometer, but with the indications furnished by these instruments and the manner of noting them; they should even be taught to read the meteorological bulletins.

(4) Chemistry.-There are numerous experiments easily carried out with very limited material. Figure 12 represents the best and most easily mounted of all minor apparatuses, with which any elementary school may be furnished. It can be made anywhere, and suffices to extract, for instance, alcohol from a fermented drink and ammonia from mineral fertilizers and even liquid manure.

h

tion of ammonia.

Prepara

From among practical experiments those should be chosen which refer directly to agri- 12. Distilling apparatus. culture; substances which serve as nourishment to plants are the most important. Potash should be extracted from wood ashes; a calcined bone should be converted into soluble phosphate by bringing it into contact with diluted hydrochloric acid, and reconverted into insoluble phosphate by neutralizing the acid used by a base, or simply by means of carbonate of soda. With the aid of limestone, ammonia should be detected in the salts of which it is a constituent and which are used as fertilizers. Pupils should learn to distinguish among the principal commercial fertilizers, nitrates of ammoniac and potassic salts, hypophosphates of scoriæ, etc. It is important that the precise meaning of each scientific term, current in the language of agriculture to-day, be understood by pupils about to leave rural schools.

The knowledge of the principal fertilizers will be greatly facilitated by the use made of them during the summer semester in experiments of demonstrative growth.

(5) Minerals.-Facts relative to soil, rocks, and earths, should be taught partly in object lessons with the aid of objects from the school museum, and in connection with experiments in chemistry, partly and principally during outdoor lessons in agriculture.

(6) Agriculture and horticulture.-Lessons in these branches should begin before spring. They should bear on all interesting subjects, especially local crops. As far as possible, a lesson should refer to things seen or objects already examined by the pupils. Teachers should begin with subjects touched upon in the intermediate

course that have already been explained in connection with reading matter and during walks.

During the whole summer season, lessons should be in close connection with practical exercises, excursions into the neighborhood, etc. The subject of each lesson on agriculture and horticulture should be that of the last or that of the next walk, or that of a practical exercise assigned for the same period.

13. Demonstrative growth in water.

The solution contains the

four elements furnished by soluble compounds, such as nitrate of potassium and hypophosphate of lime.

Second semester.-(1) Demonstrative growth.-The experiments should be prepared and conducted in a manner to prove the following fundamental maxims:

(a) Air should be allowed to easily penetrate into the soil, as roots can not dispense with oxygen; they breathe like leaves. They should find appropriate nourishmentthat is to say, fertilizers should be mixed with earth so as to enter into all parts of the soil in which roots develop. (b) In all arable land four substances-azote, phosphoric acid, potash, and lime-suffice for the complete nourishment and perfect development of vegetable life.

(c) No other elements need enter into the composition of arable ground, even though those mentioned be supplied in mineral form; in the latter case, the physical properties of the soil may be modified to a disadvantage. Organic matter, far from being ineffective, keeps the earth in a state favorable to aeration and to the development of roots; it, furthermore, acts efficaciously on the nutritive substances contained in the soil, so that dung is the first fertilizer recommended for earth in the best condition to furnish the four elements in appropriate proportion; appropriate chemical fertilizers are afterwards added.

(d) A fertilizer is good for soil, if it supplies what is wanting for the maintenance of vegetable life. The composition of a good fertilizer depends, not only upon the kind of culture for which it is intended, but also upon the nature of the ground. It is impossible to prepare a fertilizer appropriate to all soils, for even one single kind of plant. Formulas, or recipes, termed infallible and generally applicable, deserve no more confidence than quack remedies alleged to cure all diseases.

(e) To obtain remunerative harvests, the soil, after having been fertilized, must contain the four nutritive substances in proportion dependent upon the kind of plant cultivated. The modern farmer must know that excess of one of the four elements is always useless and expensive; moreover, that it can be detrimental if there be an insufficiency of any one of the three others. In other terms, the excess of an element is just as detrimental as its insufficiency, the development of plants being in proportion to the element of which they find least in the soil.

14. Effect produced by the absence or
insufficiency of an element.
The two pots were filled with sterile or

exhausted earth mixed with hypophos.
phate of lime and chloride of potassium.
After the plant appeared (oats), nitrate
of soda was added to one of the pots.
The other pot contained only a very
small proportion of azote, the original
quantity in the earth employed.

The first experiments of demonstrative growth, very elementary, but fundamental, should be made in pots, or, better, in boxes with the children's aid. The above illustrations, reproduced from photographs taken from nature, show the simplest arrangements successfully carried out in numerous schools.

The experiment represented by figure 13 proves that the four substances dissolved in the water of the bottle suffice to bring the plant to maturity. If no air is allowed

to penetrate into the water of the flask, the oxygen indispensable for the roots will be wanting and the plant will perish.

Figure 14 shows one of the simplest means of proving that if one of the nutritive elements be found only in very small quantity (all arable land, even the poorest, always contains a little of each of the four elements) vegetation suffers noticeably. The experiment represented by figure 15 is the starting point of the field of demonstration. More complicated than the preceding, it may also be made in pots or in boxes, or better still in a garden plat, if the soil be of good physical quality but greatly impoverished of nutritive elements. It is very important in point of view of the demonstration of the fundamental truths referred to above. It shows the

普普普意誉

comp

Temoin

Phosphate

After germination.

Azote

SS Potass

immense differences in the harvests from the same field in case the fertilizer responds, or not, to the composition of the soil or the wants of the plant. It does not permit an estimate of the production, for it is a qualitative, not a quantitative experiment, but it suffices to show in a striking manner that the excess of an element is just as detrimental as its insufficiency.

Observations.-Precautions to be observed in growing plants in pots: Pots used for demonstrative growth are and should be made of porous clay; consequently there is rapid evaporation, necessitating frequent watering. Placing the pots in sufficiently deep saucers or troughs, into which water is poured, provides sufficient moisture for several days, even during warm and dry periods.