298 INSTRUCTION IN THE SCHOOLS 



teachers of elementary schools possess, to be able to 

 draw the distinct line I speak of, between what ought 

 to be taught and what withheld, and considerable self- 

 restraint to keep within that line, Avhen it is seen. The 

 school-inspector, therefore, at his periodical visit, should 

 sedulously assist, by the questions he puts, in keeping 

 him to the special instruction which is to be given, 

 otherwise this branch of scientific agriculture will be 

 made to occupy too prominent a place in the course of 

 instruction, and will take up more time than is properly 

 due to it, while the pupils will, at the same time, be less 

 satisfactorily or usefully taught. 



These remarks I introduce here, as likely to be by no 

 means without their use even among ourselves ; for 

 though I have often, in various ways, pressed such 

 views upon teachers and parents in our rural districts, and 

 though as many as 26,000 copies of my little Catechism 

 — which contains all the chemistry, and all the agricul- 

 tural principles which, in my opinion, are necessary to 

 make the schoolboys of our day the agricultural improv- 

 ers of the future — have been distributed at home, yet in 

 many cases I have reason to fear that the prospect of 

 good has been marred by a departure from the simple 

 necessities of the case, and the introduction of what is 

 really extraneous matter. For whatever may be said 

 in favour of pure chemistry as a separate branch of 

 school-teaching, it is not included in, and ought not to 

 be unnecessarily mixed up, in eleinentary schools^ with 

 instruction in the principles of agriculture. 



Upon this subject of instruction in the principles of 

 agriculture in the common schools of the country, I had 

 frequent opportunities of conversing with influential 

 persons in the British Provinces and in the United 

 States, and rarely, I believe, without awakening a 

 desire, or strengthening that which pre-existed, to 

 promote this object, as a means of most certainly 



