No. 4.] PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND AGRICULTURE. 405 



There is also an important relationsliip between the school 

 and the farm which must not be too strenuously insisted 

 upon, because it subsists in connection with all other in- 

 dustries as well ; but it is no less valid on that account, and 

 is entitled to a place in the argument. I refer to those 

 elements of success which in a o-yeater or less defrree are 

 the inevitable result or more exactly the presuppositions 

 of a pul)lic-school education: punctuality; industry and 

 application ; earnestness and fidelity ; patience and perse- 

 verance ; method, neatness and economy ; self-denial and 

 self-control; loyalty, honesty, self-sacrifice and courtesy; 

 and, were these cardinal virtues even more dilio-entlv and 

 more successfully inculcated, the interests of agriculture 

 would l)e in like manner promoted. 



It is hio'h vantage ground if we can assume that elevation 

 of faith, or philosophic insight, or what you will, which to 

 the spirit of investigation presents the social organism, with 

 all its activities and interrelations, as one com})lex but 

 harmonious 'whole, in which the supply of every rational 

 want must work a reflex benefit in the interest of all. 



Whatever tends to familiarize the child, even in its earliest 

 experience outside the nursery, with objects, facts and forces 

 appertaining to rural life, is furnishing that child with 

 capital which may one day l)e available for practical uses. 

 These same agencies are, by common consent, among those 

 best calculated to promote a healthful growth in the process 

 of normal development. 



Leaves and l^lossoms ; trees, plants and shrul^s ; clay, 

 sand, loam; lairds, insects, domestic animals, with their 

 productions, changes, growth and development, furnish an 

 exhaustless variety of ol)ject lessons which the alert, percep- 

 tive faculties of children delight in, and which, under wise 

 direction, will yield no mean e(|uipment of useful information. 

 Nor is the work here limited to the culture of the intellect 

 by dealing with barren facts. There is scope for the higher 

 culture of emotion and sentiment. No child is well trained 

 whose feelings of kindness and compassion towards the 

 lower orders of animate creation are not so cultivated as 

 to make neglect unnatural and cruelty impossil)le. The 

 moral aspects of such culture must and can safely be left 



