If they are right in these views, the training must begin in the public schools. This is true for two reasons:
1. It is universally admitted that aptitudes are developed, tastes acquired, and life habits formed during the years that a child is in the public school. Hence, during these important years every child intended for the farm should be taught to know and love nature, should be led to form habits of observation, and should be required to begin a study of those great laws upon which agriculture is based. A training like this goes far toward making his life-work profitable and delightful.
2. Most boys and girls reared on a farm get no educational training except that given in the public schools. If, then, the truths that unlock the doors of nature are not taught in the public schools, nature and nature's laws will always be hid in night to a majority of our bread-winners. They must still in ignorance and hopeless drudgery tear their bread from a reluctant soil.
The authors return hearty thanks to Professor Thomas F. Hunt, University of California; Professor Augustine D. Selby, Ohio Experiment Station; Professor W. F. Massey, horticulturist and agricultural writer; and Professor Franklin Sherman, Jr., State Entomologist of North Carolina, for aid in proofreading and in the preparation of some of the material.
XVI. CROSSES, HYBRIDS, AND CROSS-POLLINATION 48
XXVII. THE CAUSE AND NATURE OF PLANT DISEASE 122
CHAPTER VII. ORCHARD, GARDEN, AND FIELD INSECTS
LXI. MILK, CREAM, CHURNING, AND BUTTER 297
LXIV. GROWING FEED STUFFS ON THE FARM 309
Teachers sometimes shrink from undertaking the teaching of a simple textbook on agriculture because they are not familiar with all the processes of farming. By the same reasoning they might hesitate to teach arithmetic because they do not know calculus or to teach a primary history of the United States because they are not versed in all history. The art of farming is based on the sciences dealing with the growth of plants and animals. This book presents in a simple way these fundamental scientific truths and suggests some practices drawn from them. Hence, even though many teachers may not have plowed or sowed or harvested, such teachers need not be embarrassed in mastering and heartily instructing a class in nature's primary laws.