At the first meeting of this committee Mr. Powell made a strong plea for interesting the children of the country in farming as a remedial measure, and maintained that the first step toward agriculture was nature-study. It had been Mr. Powell's custom to give simple agricultural and nature study instruction to the school children of every town where he was con ducting a farmers' institute, and his opinion was, therefore, based upon experience. The committee desired to see for itself the value of this idea, and experimental work was suggested, using the schools of Westchester County as a laboratory. Mr. R. Fulton Cutting generously furnished the funds for this experiment, and work was done that year in the Westchester schools, which satisfied the committee Of the soundness of the project.