Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/469

Rh hand camera, made a series of lantern slides, which proved to be of the greatest service for class instruction during the following winter. A solar camera and a twelve-foot screen completed the



equipment for the most interesting and profitable kind of instruction on the subject of ferns.

The pupils of one class studied fifteen species somewhat minutely by means of the slides and pressed specimens. Spores, sporangia, indusia, sori, pinnules, pinnæ, rachis, stipe, general shapes, textures, and relative position of parts were carefully observed, drawn, described, and colored. Notebooks contained characteristic parts of all the different species, which were broken up and distributed for the purpose. This study prepared the pupils to appreciate the development of fern crosiers in the fernery in the following spring. Twenty-two pupils out of the class of thirty-eight introduced ferns into their own gardens at home.

Other classes studied composite flowers, distribution of seeds, roots, corms, tubers, bulbs, and other material supplied by the garden.

In the spring of 1895 the development of fern crosiers was studied with great interest by the pupils. The collection of lantern slides soon included representations of the crosiers of the principal species in various stages of growth. In some respects the pictures