464 NATURAL SCIENCE. ^^.gf"^- 



Laboratories of Oxford and Cambridge, where special courses for 

 County Council students have been arranged. 



During the summer, open-air " Lessons in Gardening" are being 

 given also at other centres, and the attendance of thirty or forty 

 people at each demonstration has exceeded the expectations of the 

 Committee. 



In all this rush for technical education it is necessary to carefully 

 avoid pandering too much to the tastes of the practical man. Unless 

 the science is kept well to the front, the teaching degenerates into a 

 mere catalogue of dry operations as dead as the average gardener's 

 manual ; this does, indeed, help its student to grow various kinds of 

 produce, but the result is due to the inherent power of Nature to 

 assert herself under adverse circumstances, rather than skill or 

 intelligence on the part of the gardener. It is time we lifted 

 gardening and agriculture out of the blind empirical stage, and this 

 cannot be done by mere repetition of operations, however sound a 

 basis these may have. Great praise is due to the Royal Agricultural 

 Society for its recent efforts to spread scientific teaching in the 

 preparation of a simple and reliable text-book on " Agriculture," by 

 Dr. Fream, under their authority. We hope to follow up this 

 example by a " Structure and Physiology of Plants," for the benefit 

 of the gardener. 



The machinery for this huge scheme of Technical Education 

 cannot possibly be perfected or completed in a day. Let us hope, 

 however, that the work already begun will develop into a system 

 which will produce as intelligent and skilful a workman as the best 

 of our Continental competitors, and at the same time be peculiarly 

 English in character. 



J. Percival. 



