of classification connected with the subdivisions of life which we call botany and zoology; but such things are far removed from the young child’s world—­only gradually does it begin to dawn on him that there are interesting likenesses, and that in this world, as in his own, there are relationships; when he realises this, the time for a nature lesson has come.  But much direct experience must come first.

In setting out the furnishing of the school the need for this activity is implied.  No school worthy of the name can do without a garden, any more than it can do without reading books, or blackboards, indeed the former need is greater:  if it is possible, and possibilities gradually merge into acceptances, a pond should be in the middle of the garden, and trees should also be considered as part of the whole.  It is not difficult for the ordinary person to make a pond, or even to begin a garden.

In a school situated in S.E.  London in the midst of rows of monotonous little houses, and close to a busy railway junction, a miracle was performed:  the playground was not very large, and of the usual uncompromising concrete.  The children, most of whose fathers worked on the railway, lived in the surrounding streets, and most of them had a back-yard of sorts; they had little or no idea of a garden.  One of the teachers had, however, a vision which became a reality.  She asked her children to help to make a garden, and for weeks every child brought from his back-yard his little paper bag of soil which was deposited over some clinkers that were spread out in a narrow border against the outside wall; in a few months there was a border of two yards in which flowers were planted:  the caretaker, inspired by the sight, did his share of fixing a wooden strip as a kind of supporting border to the whole:  in two years the garden had spread all round the outside wall of the playground, and belonged to several classes.

An even greater miracle was performed in a dock-side school, where to most of the children a back-yard was a luxury beyond all possibility.  The school playground was very small, and evening classes made a school garden quite impossible.  But the head mistress was one who saw life full of possibilities, and so she saw a garden even in the sordidness.  Round the parish church was a graveyard long disused, and near one of the gates a small piece of ground that had never been used for any graveyard purpose:  it was near enough to the school to be possible, and in a short time the miracle happened—­the entrance to the graveyard became a children’s flowering garden.

Inside the school where plants and flowers in pots are numerous, a part of the morning should be spent in the care of these:  few people know how to arrange flowers, and fewer how to feed and wash them; if there are an aquarium or chrysalis boxes, they have to be attended to:  all this should be a regular duty with a strong sense of responsibility attached to it; it is curious how many people are content to live in an atmosphere of decaying matter.