Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/470

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452
POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of the crosiers served a more useful purpose than the crosiers themselves, because their representations on the screen were very large, and could be seen very easily by the whole class at once.

At present there are more than one hundred and fifty different species of native wild plants in the garden. No attempt has been made to arrange them in ornamental beds, since they can not be studied so well in that arrangement. When over fifty pupils at a time are to study growing plants, such plants must be easily accessible, and therefore scattered as much as is consistent with other conditions,

Fourth-Grade Pupils observing. George Putnam School Garden.

especially that of caring for the plants and mowing the grass about them. Three or four times as many children can examine twenty plants set in rows as can examine them arranged in a bed; and the work of weeding the plants and cutting the grass in the former arrangement is not half as much as in the latter. The useful arrangement always takes precedence of the ornamental.

A great many insects have been observed upon the plants—beetles, wasps, flies, moths, and butterflies. In the last class nine species have been seen: Pieris rapae, Colias philodice, Melitæa pharos, Cynthia Atalanta, Grapta interrogationis, Cynthia cardui, Danais Archippus, Papilio turnus, and Lycæna americana. Soon