6 /; ■] ;. .»; i" EDITOR'S PREFACE 



a part of the early training of boys and girls, is an ideal which 

 we all hope to see realised; but so far as concerns the 

 agricultural community, this ideal, although at present remote, 

 must be seriously kept in view in any scheme of education 

 having for its object the intellectual advancement of the 

 British farmer. 



In the meantime the County Councils, provided with the funds 

 for Technical Education, have in many agricultural counties 

 developed a laudable desire to improve the status of the 

 agriculturalist by placing the means of acquiring sound' 

 instruction within his reach. In most parts of the country 

 where such facilities have been offered, the younger generation 

 of farmers have been found willing to avail themselves of them. 

 Those counties which have failed hitherto to touch the 

 agricultural community would do well to reconsider the policy 

 which their Technical Instruction Committees have adopted. 



With regard to a science of such fundamental importance 

 as Chemistry, it is most desirable to arrest the attention and 

 to arouse the interest of the student by enabling him to 

 acquire his knowledge of general principles through practical 

 work carried out in the laboratory with materials and by 

 means of illustrations drawn as far as possible from sources 

 with which his ordinary observation makes him daily familiar. 

 This method may possibly lend itself to the criticism that 

 it is wrong in principle to attempt too early a specialisation 

 before the rudiments have been acquired. Nevertheless I am 

 convinced that such a system can be successfully followed if 

 judiciously carried out and not driven to the unwarrantable 

 extreme of endeavouring to convert the agricultural student 

 into an expert chemist. 



The author of the present book has on these lines prepared 

 a course of practical chemistry which has to my knowledge 

 been most successful with agricultural students in the Central 

 Laboratories of the Essex County Council at Chelmsford. At 

 my suggestion he now offers this course to a wider public, and 

 I can confidently recommend the work to all those who are 

 practically engaged in teaching this science to a class of pupils 

 whose welfare is so intimately associated with the progress of 

 chemical knowledge. 



R. Meldola. 



