390 THE SCHOOL BOARDS xv 



years to run under the feet of cab-horses whenever 

 they can, I know not how they would learn to use 

 their limbs with agility. 



Now there is no real difficulty about teaching 

 drill and the simpler kinds of gymnastics. It is 

 done admirably well, for example, in the North 

 Surrey Union schools; and a year or two ago 

 when I had an opportunity of inspecting these 

 schools, I was greatly struck with the effect of 

 such training upon the poor little waifs and strays 

 of humanity, mostly picked out of the gutter, who 

 are being made into cleanly, healthy, and useful 

 members of society in that excellent institution. 



Whatever doubts people may entertain about 

 the efficacy of natural selection, there can be none 

 about artificial selection; and the breeder who 

 should attempt to make, or keep up, a fine stock 

 of pigs, or sheep, under the conditions to which 

 the children of the poor are exposed, would be the 

 laughing-stock even of the bucolic mind. Parlia- 

 ment has already done somctliing in this direction 

 by declining to be an accomplice in the aspliyxia- 

 tion of school children. It refuses to make any 

 grant to a scliool in which the cul)ical contents of 

 the school-room are inadequate to allow of proper 

 respiration. I should like to see it make another 

 step in the same direction, and either refuse to 

 give a grant to a school in which physical training 

 is not a part of the programme, or, at any rate, 

 offer to pay upon such training. If something of 



