IN the spring the garden became the center of organization of the science work. The feeling that the sap was again rising in the veins of all nature gave rise to an innate longing to help nature into activity and beauty again, the desire to plant seeds and to watch their growth. In early April the garden plot was surveyed by the seventhgrade children. The portion allotted to the fifth grade was a rectangle fifty feet east and west by fifteen north and south. With tape and rule the children verified the measurements of the seventh grade and began to plan the work. Many problems confronted them. As it was still too cool to begin the outdoor work, they devoted themselves to solving some of them in the laboratory. The garden was selected on an untried area. Was the soil rich, or would it need fertilizing? Of what was it composed? The first question was practically answered by taking some of the soil into the house and testing the growth of plants in it with the growth of similar plants in rich and in poor soils. The children did not know what made the soil rich or poor, did not know the soil constituents. They could see the stones, gravel, and sand. They were anxious to test it for carbonate of lime, but did not know how it was made nor what the real body of it was. They suggested a coarse sieve for the pebbles and stones, and a finer one for the gravelly sand. They could see the sand that would pass through their fine sieve, but did not know how to separate it from the dirt, as they called the clay. They decided to take a kilogram of soil and separate it into as many parts as possible, and find the part that each made of the whole. This amount furnished groups of two or three with about 200 grams each with which to work. After separating the stones and gravel, they boiled the remainder about twenty min50