As a school-room subject, the potato is not very tractable, unless we study merely the tubers. If the school is in session in summer, the growing plant may be had. Then it will be found to be an interesting and profitable exercise to set the children at the problem of determining the root-system of the potato plant. How do the roots look? Does the plant have a tap-root, or do the roots spread laterally? Are the tubers borne on roots? Or on underground stems? Why do you think so? Does the tuber terminate the branch? What relation, in position, do the tuber-bearing branches bear to other parts of the underground system? Do you think that the tuber-bearing branches aid in collecting food from the soil? The top of the plant may be studied in the same spirit,--branching, leaves, flowers, berries. If the growing plant cannot be had, study tubers. Compare as to size, shape, color, character of eyes, whether scabby or smooth. Use them as objects in drawing. Plant tubers in the school-room, in boxes or flower pots. This Leaflet will suggest some interesting observations. How important is the potato crop in the State and nation? The pupil can use his mathematics here. LEAFLET XL. THE HEPATICA.[54] BY ANNA BOTSFORD COMSTOCK. [54] Home Nature-Study Course, Vol. IV, No. 30, March, 1903. [Illustration] As children are always especially interested in the wild flowers in spring, I have thought best to study a few of the woodland blossoms. The wonderful processes of plant life are as well shown in these as in any. The hepatica is among the first which greets us in the spring, and we will study this first. There are several ways of getting acquainted with a plant: one is to go-a-visiting, and another is to invite the plant to our own home, either as guest on the window-sill, or as a tenant of the garden. When we visit the hepatica in its own haunts it is usually with the longing for spring in our hearts that awakens with the first warm sunshine and which is really one of the subtlest as well as greatest charms of living in a climate that has a snowy winter. As we thread our way into the sodden woods, avoiding the streams and puddles that are little glacial rivers and lakes from fast disappearing snow-drifts still heaped on the north sides of things, we look eagerly for signs of returning life. The eye slowly differentiates from the various shades of brown in the floor of the forest a bit of pale blue or pink purple that at first seems as if it were an optical delusion; but as we look again to make sure, lo! it is the hepatica. There it is, rising from its mass of purple brown leaves, leaves that are always beautiful in shape and color and suggest patterns for sculpture like the acanthus or for rich tapestries like the palm-leaf in the Orient. There the brave little flower stands with its face to the sun and its back to the snow-drift and looks out on a gray brown world and nods at it and calls it "good."