No. 2.] BRITISH ASSOCIATION MEETING. 157 



country, and that is the introduction of instruction in natural 

 science into the system of education of our schools. As to the 

 feasibility of this in the primary schools, I believe most of those 

 who are intimately acquainted with the management of these 

 schools have expressed their decidedly favourable opinion — it being 

 found that a portion of the time now allotted to the three great 

 requisites of a primary education might with advantage be set 

 apart, for the purpose of instructing the pupils in subjects of com- 

 mon interest, calculated to awaken in their minds a desire for 

 knowledge of the various objects presented by the field of nature 

 around them. As to the benefit which may result from this 

 measure to the persons so instructed, it is scarcely necessary for 

 me to say anything in this place. It is so obvious that whatever 

 knowledge, though easily acquired, and even of the most elemen- 

 tary kind, tends to enlarge the range of observation and thought, 

 must have some efiect in removing its recipients from grosser in- 

 fluences, and may even give information which may prove useful 

 in social economy and in the occupations of labour. Nor need I 

 point out how much more extended the advantages of such in- 

 , struction may prove if introduced into the system of our secondary 

 schools, and more freely combined than heretofore with the two 

 exclusively literary and philosophical study which has so long pre- 

 vailed in the approved British education. Without disparage- 

 ment to those modes of study as in themselves necessary and use- 

 ful, and excellent means of disciplining the mind to learning, I 

 cannot but hold it as certain that the mind which is entirely with- 

 out scientific cultivation is but half prepared for the common pur- 

 poses of modern life, and is entirely unqualified for forming a judg- 

 ment on some of the most difiicult and yet most common and im- 

 portant questions of the day, afiecting the interests of the whole 

 community. I refer with great pleasure to the cogent arguments 

 addressed yesterday by Dr. Bennet to the medical graduates of 

 the University, in favour of the establishment of physiology as a 

 subject of general education in this country with reference to sani- 

 tary conditions. It is gratifying, therefore, to perceive that the 

 suggestions made some time ago in regard to this subject by the 

 British Association, through its committee, have already borne 

 good fruit, and that the attention of those who preside over edu- 

 cation in this country, as well as of the public themselves, is more 

 earnestly directed to the object of securing for the lowest as well 

 as the highest classes of the community that wholesome combination 



