d pears are at their best in the North and many kinds
are very long-lived trees. There are apple trees known to be a hundred
years old still bearing. Sugar maple does well where there are long
winters, and a wood of them--locally called a "sugar bush"--is a paying
piece of property. Most fruit trees are best bought from dealers or
obtained from your friends. They do not come "true," as it is called,
from the seed. A Baldwin apple-seed will not produce a Baldwin apple.
But as all the varieties are got by selecting from seedlings we can
experiment if we wish. We are already saving apple-seeds for next year,
and it will certainly be grand if we can get a new kind of apple and
name it the Girl Scout.

We shall not make many suggestions about flowers. Any and all kinds of
flowers will do in your gardens but do not neglect our own wild ones.
Take the goldenrod for instance. The finest we have ever seen is grown
in a city garden. Many other of our wild flowers will bear cultivating
and some well repay the care necessary to "tame" them. The atamasco lily
seems to be perfectly at home in the garden and so does the bloodroot.
Violets of course would be favorites if our native species were not with
one exception scentless. As any gardener's book will tell you all about
our "tame" flowers it is not necessary to say much about them.

Part IV

SANITATION

Girl Scouts should do everything in their power to make and keep their
homes healthy as well as happy.

Most of you cannot choose your own dwelling, but whether you live in a
house, a cottage, a flat, in rooms, or even in one room of a house, you
can do a very great deal to keep it healthy and pure.

Fresh air is your great friend; it will help you to fight disease better
than anything else. Open all your windows as often as you can, so that
the air may get into every nook and corner. Never keep an unused room
shut up. You know what a stagnant pool is like--no fresh water runs
through it, it is green and slimy, and full of insects and dead things;
you would not care to bathe in it. Well, still and stuffy air in a house
is very much worse, only, unluckily, its dangers cannot be seen, but
they are there lying in ambush for the ignorant person. Disease germs,
poisonous gases, mildew, insects, dust, and dirt have it all their own
way in stale, used-up air.

You do not like to wash in water other people have used, but it is far
worse to breathe air other people have