148 A GLIMPSE OF 



consider little can be done in life without an accurate knowledge of 

 the Greek and Latin grammars, or a facility to extract cube-roots ; 

 and, even if the question is referred to India, Secretaries, and such- 

 like purists, dip their lingers deepest in the pie. 



I would not allow any lad destined for rule in India, to study 

 classics or mathematics after leaving school. Mr. Chiswick was a 

 sensible man, when he declared that the years Warren Hastings had 

 already wasted over hexameters and pentameters were quite sufficient ; 

 and as for twenty years I was behind the scenes, I would make 

 knowledge of the vernacular of primary importance. 



Land measuring is also a very important subject much neglected. 

 A district officer should be able to run a Gunter's chain over disputed 

 land, and tell its area ; and he should be able to tell at a glance the 

 approximate area of a farm. He should know something about 

 agriculture, and the crops of India. During "the famine," as I was 

 walking one day with Sir George Campbell and another high 

 official, (not living now), we passed a crop of maize, and Sir George 

 enquired what it was. The high official replied, he did not know, 

 save that he had seen his servants give something similar to his 

 cows. 



There is such a fearful amount of humbug connected with the 

 studies of embryo Indian administrators, that at the risk of being 

 voted insufferably dull, I must write a few more words in illustration 

 of my theories, for although I am out of the coach myself, I should 

 feel happy if I could do a good turn for the natives of India, who did 

 many good turns for me during my time in harness. 



I was prospecting Owen's " Anatomy of the Vertebrate Animals," 

 one day, and thinking what stiff reading it seemed to be, when one 

 of my assistants, a competition- walla, (since dead), looking over my 

 shoulder, said that he knew all the volumes off by heart, as he had 

 taken them up for examination. Books on botany he also knew by 

 heart, so he declared, and he presented them to me, with the remark, 

 that as he had made a theoretical, so I might make a practical, use 

 pf them. He certainly could not identify the beasts, or birds, or 



