Rural Education in our Village SchooU. 163 



knowledge, any decent teacher with a spark of agricultural 

 enthusiasm could make these subjects of extreme int^-rest, and 

 of much use to their elder pupils. These matters might be the 

 first subjects thought of when the village school syllabus is 

 arranged, and not, as is at i)resent the case, left among the last, 

 if not actually ignored. Without such instruction many of 

 those destined to follow the plough for the rest of their lives 

 are not only deprived of much pleasure, but their life's employ- 

 ment is, by the action of the education authorities, reduced, 

 as far as it is possible to do so, to something akin to the 

 treadmill. 



As regards the study of animal-husbandry, as there is but 

 one live-stock theatre in all our English Agricultural Colleges, 

 it is perhaps needless to remark that no sensible person suggests 

 the introduction of cattle or even pigs and sheep into the 

 village school-house for object lessons. A close study of the 

 work on view at nature study exhibitions has shown how very 

 little of what is possible has been done. Pictures of Scotch 

 coUeys on mountain tops, copies, evidently from books, of 

 exotic plants, even cases of small bottles of " proprietary " 

 manifres come to mind, but one has no recollection of studies 

 showing any appreciation of the lines that indicate useful 

 points in the bodies of our farm stock. Still less does one 

 know of work showing instruction about the life of farm 

 animals. Experience has taught the writer that simple dia- 

 grams may be of great use, even with very elementary country 

 classes, in making clear the more simple phenomena of animal 

 life. It ought not to be necessary to emphasise that a boy will 

 be in a better position to feed a calf if he knows something of 

 the digestive apparatus, that another youth will be less likely 

 to over-drive fat sheep if he has heard something about the 

 circulation of the blood, that waggoners would have fewer 

 " colds " among their teams were they taught something of the 

 delicacy of the respiratory system, and so on. The amount of 

 instruction, however, now given on these matters is well 

 summarised, we fear, by the experienced correspondent who 

 suggests " that children should be taught that animals are 

 alive." 



General Remarks. — As might be expected, there is a great 

 variety in the proposals and criticisms given under "General 

 Remarks." We will first note those in which an alteration in 

 the present system is definitely proposed. 



In four of the papers it is urged that the chibh-en should 

 leave school at an earlier age, while in two others it is proposed 

 to allow them to do so at the discretion of the teachers. 



Mr. John Rose, of Aylesbury, after forty years' experience, 

 and having farmed eighteen hundred acres, urges farmers to 



