294 Fifth Conference 



and art which has been practically universally brought 

 about by County Councils. These schools are very 

 largely used, especially in the science subjects, 

 chemistry, botany, physiography, &c., by the teachers 

 of primary schools desirous of gaining additional 

 qualifications for their work. In 1890 these schools 

 were in all the more rural counties giving a worthless 

 education mainly by means of books, an impossible 

 way of teaching science. In my own experience three 

 schools (farmed, of course) without laboratories and 

 almost without apparatus served a population of half 

 a million, and were naturally looked upon by teachers 

 with contempt. Now fifteen schools fully equipped, 

 many with two laboratories, are centres of work for 

 the teachers, and serve for the education in physio- 

 graphy of all the pupil-teachers in the county. 



In many counties also clubs and societies have been 

 formed whereby field-work in geology, zoology, or 

 botany, under the guidance of a County Council expert 

 for this is essential fill up the Saturday afternoons 

 during the summer, and the results of these rambles 

 are imparted to the children in the day or continua- 

 tion schools during the winter. The very provision 

 of selected boxes of apparatus, schemes of study, or 

 specimens for the evening-schools, and the visits of 

 the county inspectors, also serve indirectly as a means 

 of instruction to the teachers; considering that in 

 forty out of the fifty rural counties the County Councils 

 have for some six years past run practically all the 

 evening-schools and introduced new methods almost 

 everywhere, the influence of their work must be con- 

 siderable. Where the inspector is also himself (as 

 is mine) a skilled teacher, his conferences with the 



