_To the teacher._--The winter months, besides affording an opportunity for seeing trees and plants in their dormant or quiescent condition, also afford an opportunity for reading and reflection, for recalling observations and experiences of the past season, and for making plans for work and study in the school garden, woods, and fields when spring returns. The knowledge gained by the pupils through first-hand observation of trees, flowers, and gardens can be greatly extended by pictures and stories descriptive of these, which the teacher may from time to time bring to the school-room. Their personal experiences will be the basis for interpretation of many new things which will come up in the reading lessons, in selections which the teacher reads from week to week, and in books and papers which they themselves read in their homes. Thus the interest that is aroused by the first-hand studies of plants in garden, orchard, or woodland will be carried over from autumn to spring, and the pupils, with the awakening of spring, will take up anew the study of plant life with a keener interest because of the time given to reading and reflection during the winter. Illustrated magazines dealing with gardening and with the study of trees and plants, and such magazines as have a children's department, will prove of great assistance to the teacher who makes any serious attempt to interest pupils in plant studies. Stories of life in the woods and of plant studies suitable to young pupils should be used. REFERENCES Margaret Morley: _Flowers and their Friends._ Ginn & Co. 50 cents. Margaret Morley: _Seed Babies._ Ginn & Co. 25 cents. Margaret Morley: _Little Wanderers._ Ginn & Co. 30 cents. Alice Lounsberry: _The Garden Book for Young People._ Stokes. $1.50. Gertrude Stone: _Trees in Prose and Poetry._ Ginn & Co. 45 cents. COMPARATIVE LESSON ON VARIETIES OF WINTER APPLES KING, BALDWIN, NORTHERN SPY Discuss the names, keeping and cooking qualities of the apples, and bearing qualities of the trees. Provide each member of the class with a typical representative of each of the above varieties of apples. Compare the three apples as to size, form, colour--including marks; hardness, length, and thickness of stem; depth of cavity at the stem end; depth and shape of the cavity at the calyx end. Split each apple from stem to calyx and compare as to the thickness and toughness of the skin, the colour of the flesh, the size of the core, taste and juiciness of the flesh. _To the teacher._--All three are apples of fair size, the Baldwin being on the average the smallest of the three. All three are roundish, but the King is somewhat oval-round, and the Spy, conical-round. The Baldwin has a yellowish skin with crimson and red splashes dotted with russet spots. The King is reddish, shading to dark crimson. The Spy has a yellowish-green skin sprinkled with pink and striped with red.