372 Natural science. 



July, 



the stock are capable of being conducted in a much more efficient 

 way, if but the requisite knowledge be there. The question is, how 

 to provide this for the dwellers in our thinly scattered farms and 

 cottages. The present system of itinerant lecturers visiting 

 in succession the country villages, and gathering an audience from 

 the surrounding district into soxne school-room or other available 

 place, is on its trial. In a few places it has succeeded in attracting 

 and even interesting those it was meant for. In the majority of 

 instances, perhaps, it has failed, often miserably failed, to rouse the 

 bucolic mind from its lethargy, or draw it aside from its usual 

 method of spending its evenings. It may be that country people are 

 not quite awake to what this invasion of their solitude means, and 

 have not yet come to any conclusion as to what sort of creature this 

 new kind of packman is. Some seem to be more amused than edified, 

 and are accused of the levity of a passing joke at the man of science. 

 The scheme is certainly open to the objection that they are scarcely 

 prepared for it, especially when the lecturer insists on airing his 

 superior information; and also to the suspicion in the most successful 

 cases of leaving little permanent influence behind. Those who have 

 tried have sadly to confess how little they can teach to any purpose 

 even in a session of continuous work, and are disposed to be 

 sceptical of the fruit of ten or twelve lectures hastily cast on such 

 rough soil. 



It is easier, however, to criticise than to suggest anything which 

 will serve the purpose better. The want is a difficult one to meet 

 and itinerancy seems the only solution in the meantime. When our 

 educational machinery is completed, perhaps technical as well as 

 secondary instruction will be provided in country schools. 



As an auxiliary to this or any other scheme, would it not be 

 possible to have a museum in which the facts could be presented to 

 the eye? In addition to illustrating the lecture, it would remain a 

 permanent element when the lecturer had departed. There are few 

 country districts where a room might not be had which could be 

 opened every evening, after six or seven o'clock, for those who cared 

 to visit it and spend an hour there. Not a general museum, which 

 is only a sort of show place — general things seldom do very much 

 good, but a strictly agricultural museum, containing only what is 

 interesting and valuable to country people, arranged in an easily 

 intelligible way. The rent of such a place would be trifling, and the 

 trouble of getting the things together and grouping them would 

 not be great. 



This paper is intended to show not how such a museum might be 

 laid out, but how it is actually being laid out in the neighbourhood of 

 Dundee. At least a start has been made, whatever the end may be. 



Plainly, the thing to begin with is the soil. That is the basis of 

 the whole matter. To the ordinary farmer, much more to the 

 ordinary ploughman, soils are soils. They need ploughing, manuring, 



