The following questions relate to the study of a beet plant. Any other available plant may be reported on. The important thing is that a minute study be made of some particular plant. What plant are you making this special study of this month? What care do you give it? What conditions of temperature and moisture do you find most beneficial to its growth? What other plants are related to it? (Mention a wild and a cultivated plant.) What leads you to think them related? (Make this clear and definite.) How do the plants which come from beet roots differ from those which come from the seed? Of what utility to the plant is the fleshy root of beet, turnip, or carrot? When is this root made use of by the plant? What becomes of the old beet as the plant grows larger and stronger? What is the natural length of life of an individual beet plant? Through how many changes of form does it pass? Which of these are "resting" stages? Give the events in the life history of a beet in chronological order by seasons, beginning with a seed in the spring of 1903, and ending with the first crop of ripened seed. LEAFLET XLVI. PRUNING.[63] BY MARY ROGERS MILLER. [63] Home Nature-Study Course, Vol. IV, No. 20, February, 1902. [Illustration] You should know how the trees in your school yard have been pruned. Who did the work, nature or a man with a saw? Some people hold to the idea that pruning is unnatural, and therefore should not be practiced. Let us see if this is true. Have you ever gone into the deep woods after a storm? Who has been there, tearing and wrenching at the big limbs, twisting the small branches until the ground is strewn with wreckage? Nature has been pruning a few trees and she works with a fury which is awe-inspiring. But the trees are much the worse for their encounter with the forces they must obey without question. Their branches are broken; mere stubs are left. With the melting snow and the April rains germs of decay are likely to enter at every break in the bark. In a few years the trunk may be weakened and the monarch of the woods lie prone upon the forest floor. We may learn the lesson of how not to prune by looking at this great pine tree torn by the storm (Fig. 281). "But why do we prune?" one asks. Let the horticulturist answer. In a Farmers' Reading-Course lesson on The Care of Trees, Professor Craig says: "Fruit trees must be pruned. If a tree in an open field is allowed to go unpruned, the crown soon becomes a dense mass of twigs and interlacing branches. Such a tree may produce as large a number of apples as a well-pruned, open-headed tree, but will there be the same percentage of merchantable fruit? The chief effort of every plant under natural conditions is expended in ensuring its own reproduction. This is chiefly effected by means of seeds. A small apple may contain as many seeds as a large one and even more. The orchardist wants big fruits, and if they are nearly seedless so much the better."