TEOPICAL EDUCATION. 



IF any one were to ask me (which is highly unlikely) ' In 

 what university would an intelligent young man do best 

 to study ? ' I think I should be very much inclined in- 

 deed to answer offhand, ' In the Tropics.' 



No doubt this advice sounds on first hearing just a 

 trifle paradoxical ; and no doubt, too, the proposed 

 university has certain serious drawbacks (like many 

 others) on the various grounds of health, expense, faith, 

 and morals. Senior Proctors are unknown at Honolulu ; 

 Select Preachers don't range as far as the West Coast. 

 But it has always seemed to me, nevertheless, that 

 certain elements of a liberal education are to be acquired 

 tropically which can never be acquired in a temperate, 

 still less in an arctic or antarctic academy. This is more 

 especially true, I allow, in the particular cases of the 

 biologist and the sociologist ; but it is also true in a some- 

 what less degree of the mere common arts course, and 

 the mere average seeker after liberal culture. Vast 

 aspects of nature and human life exist which can never 

 adequately be understood aright except in tropical 

 countries ; vivid side-lights are cast upon our own history 



