is work, builds
machines and testing devices, which the boys and girls use in solving
the problems which they bring from their homes. No less close to the
life of the place is the chemical laboratory, which offers opportunity
for the analysis of soil, the chemistry of fertilizers, experiments in
testing food and milk, and a number of other matters pertaining to
agriculture and domestic life.

The mechanical courses are closely related to the work in agriculture,
since most of the boys who take up the mechanical work are to go on the
farms. The course in mechanics passes quickly over the elements of the
work--most boys have learned to use saw, plane, chisel, auger, and
hammer years before. The smithing work of tempering, annealing, welding,
soldering and removing rust, all leads up to the real work of the
shops,--the making of products. The boys make pruning knives, squares
and drawing boards, grafting hooks, nail boxes, apple-boxing devices
(for this is an apple country), cement rollers, mallets, whiffle-trees,
bob-sleds, holders for saw filing, bag-holders, chicken-coops, poultry
exhibit boxes, hammer handles, greenhouse flats. Besides, they have
exercises in belt-lacing, in cement work, and reinforced concrete. Then,
too, they make models of barns and bridges, computing strains,
lumber-costs, labor-costs, floor spacing and arrangement.

The agricultural course deals, in some detail, with fruit-growing,
animal husbandry, grain-growing, and related topics. Though the scope of
such a course is necessarily limited in a high school, it forms an
invaluable addition to the knowledge of the boy who cannot go to an
agricultural college before he begins his life on the farm. Taught by
an agricultural expert, the work assumes real importance to the
prospective farmer.

Nor are the girls of Lowville neglected.

V Real Domestic Science

The domestic science department, in charge of an expert, takes up
household economics, sewing, dietetics and cooking. The work throughout
is practical, the girls learning the principles of sanitation, and their
application to the household; domestic art and home decoration;
lighting, heating and ventilation. The sewing classes cover the usual
exercises in simple hemming and darning, making towels, hemming napkins,
and the like; then underclothes, and later dresses are made.

In the cooking laboratory the girls learn food values and food
combinations, the cooking of simple dishes, the prepa