Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/737

Rh and recorded, until school closed, the lovely procession of the flowering plants. One year we observed the blooming of about two hundred of our native plants of wood, swamp and field. In this way the boys gained some conception of the wealth and variety of the Ottawa flora. We also made a special study of some one family throughout the year. I inserted glass tubes in the desks, and in these the boys were able to keep flowers fresh and beautiful. The boys also drew and painted the plants and made ornamental designs from them.

During the spring, also, the boys went to the woods and took home trees or shrubs or flowering herbs or ferns, according to their choice, and planted them in their gardens. Just before winter set in, the boys took home herbs from the woods to have the pleasure of a bit of spring in their homes in the middle of winter. In this way we induced hepaticas and spring beauties to bloom at Christmas time, and sweet cicely a couple of months later, when the plants in the woods