22 THE PLACE OF RURAL ECONOMY 



does not seem to me that it can be consistently urged 

 in the University of Oxford, where the regulations that 

 govern the School of Natural Science encourage, and, 

 in fact, demand early specialization of a very pro- 

 nounced type. Assuming, for a moment, that the pro- 

 posals brought before Congregation in 1898 were 

 adopted, the Honours School in Agriculture would 

 be supplied with candidates drawn chiefly from two 

 sources. It would receive, in the first place and 

 perhaps chiefly men who had passed, in the Honours 

 School of Natural Science, a Preliminary Examination 

 in Chemistry, Animal Physiology, and Botany. Now, 

 at present, a man may take these three subjects in the 

 Preliminary Examination, and, subsequently, he may 

 spend all his time in specializing in Geology, or in 

 Zoology. Whether the course of study in the hypo- 

 thetical School of Agriculture would be an improvement 

 on this, or the reverse, it is not necessary to inquire, 

 but at least this may be said, that it would be different. 

 A candidate would not be expected to abandon the 

 systematic study of Chemistry; on the contrary, he 

 would be bound to extend such study, which would 

 then embrace the composition and properties of crop 

 and animal products, and of the materials, artificial and 

 natural, that are employed to nourish crops and farm 

 animals. His acquaintance with Animal Physiology 

 would receive economic application in the direction of 

 problems connected with the nutrition and reproduction 

 of domestic animals. He would be called upon to con- 

 tinue his study of Botany in its relation to metabolism 

 in crop-plants, to the economic aspect of the symbiotic 

 association of crops and micro-organisms, to fungal 

 diseases of plants, to improvement of cultivated plants 

 by hybridization, cross-fertilization, and selection, to the 



