224 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 



A number of our teaching institutions have been con- 

 cerned of late years with the difficult task of training 

 agricultural students ; and the framing of courses em- 

 bodying science and practice in suitable proportions has 

 engaged the attention and led to the co-operation of 

 professional scientists and ''practical" men, not always 

 with the happiest result. Huxley's views on the subject 

 are indicated in a letter to the Torkshire Herald (April 

 II, 1 891), answering questions asked by Mr. J. Harri- 

 son, who had been preparing a paper on " Technical 

 Education as applied to Agriculture " for the Easingwold 

 Agricultural Club : — 



" I am afraid that my opinion upon the subject of your inquiry 



is worth very litde — my ignorance of practical agriculture being 



profound. However, there are some general principles which 



apply to all technical training ; the first of these, I think, is that 



practice is to be learned only by practice. The farmer must be 



made by and through farm work, i believe I might be able to 



give you a fair account of a bean plant and of the manner and 



condition of its growth, but if I were to try to raise a crop ot 



beans, your club would probably laugh consumedly at the result. 



Nevertheless, I believe that you practical people would be all the 



better for the scientific knowledge which does not enable me to 



grow beans. It would keep you from attempting hopeless 



experiments, and would enable you to take advantage of the 



innumerable hints which Dame Nature gives to people who live 



in direct contact with things. And this leads me to the second 



general principle, which I think applies to all technical teaching 



for school-boys and school-girls, and that is, that they should be 



led from the observation of the commonest facts to general 



scientific truths. If I were called upon to frame a course of 



elementary instruction preparatory to agriculture, I am not sure 



I should attempt chemistry, or botany, or physiology, or geology, 



as such. It is a method fraught with the danger of spending 



too much time and attention on abstraction and theories, on 



words and notions instead of things. The history of a bean, ot 



a grain of wheat, of a turnip, of a sheep, of a pig, or of a cow, 



properly treated — with the introduction of the elements of 



