154 Rural Education m ou7' Village Schools. 



Helianti is certainly a crop which proves itself valuable in 

 times of drought, and is well suited to ensure food throughout 

 critical times. In this climate it is doubtful if it can be relied 

 upon to make hay, though when made it is wed liked by 

 animals ; the crop can, however, be made into good ensilage 

 after being chaffed or chopped. 



Mention has not been made of plants such as Sorghum 

 saccharatum, millet, and others which were strongly advocated 

 rather more than twenty years ago, for although they doubtless 

 possess valuable features, at any rate the varieties which 

 reached this country did not prove sufficiently valuable to 

 encourage farmers to continue to grow them. However, with 

 the above-mentioned opportunities to develop the crops grown 

 already on an extensive scale, and the possibilities which some 

 of those less frequently cultivated reveal, there is little need to 

 be anxious as to the food supply even at the periods of the year 

 when drought or frost have hitherto caused trouble and loss. 



W. J. Malden. 



Etchingbam. 



RURAL EDUCATION IN OUR VILLAGE 

 SCHOOLS. 



That children in our country villages should be ()l)liged to go 

 to school is part and parcel of the compulsory education system 

 which this country, like most civilised nations, deems it 

 necessary to enforce for the welfare of the State. Anothei- 

 circumstance of rural life, as certain as the first, has been a 

 great movement of depopulation continuously going on. This 

 movement, if not as active as it was some short time back, is at 

 any rate not at the present moment reversed. 



A third circumstance we m.ay note concerning the rustic 

 population, and that is a very general belief held by those in a 

 position to judge — to wit, the'employers — that the younger farm 

 hands are not such skilful craftsmen as their fathers. In fact, 

 it is only too often the case nowadays to find that many of 

 those operations, so common in farm work, that require a skil- 

 ful coinbination of brain and hand, are performed best by the 

 grandfathers of young men already at work on the farm after 

 the close of their period of compulsory schooling. It would, 

 perhaps, be no great exaggeration to say that it is easy to find 

 villages in England where not only the best, but the only skilful 

 exponents of such cratts as say draining, layering, thatching, 

 stack-building, &c., are the venerable gi-andparents we have 

 referred to. 



