APRIL 18, 1912] 
NATURE 
topics. The binding of the book is strong, plain, 
and apparently durable; the edges of the leaves 
are coloured with the lurid pigment usually in- 
dicative of specially pious literature. Perhaps, 
however, it will mellow rapidly in chemical sur- 
roundings. S: 
AGRICULTURE IN THE SCHOOL AND 
AFTERWARDS. 
Beginnings in Agriculture. By Albert R. Mann. 
Pp. xii+ 341. (New York: The Macmillan Co. ; 
Londen: Maemillan and Co., Ltd., 1911.) Price 
as. 6d.) net. 
Dairy Cattle and Milk Production. Prepared for 
the use of Agricultural College Students and 
Dairy Farmers. By Prof. Clarence H. Eckles. 
Pp. xii+342. (New York: The Macmillan Co. ; 
London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1911.) Price 
7s. net. 
T is universally agreed by all who have con- 
sidered the subject that the education of the 
child ought to have some relation to the surround- 
ings among which its life will be passed, and that, 
in consequence, the education of the country 
school should be directly connected with country 
life and the great rural industry. In America this 
principle has long since been translated into prac- 
tice—how completely is best seen by the flood of 
agricultural books issuing each year from the 
publishing houses—and we have in the first of 
these volumes an illustration of how it was done 
in a particular case. 
Wherever reformers have tried to make 
rural education fit country life, the question has 
sooner or later cropped up: Ought agriculture to 
be taught in schools? and this speedily raises 
another: Can agriculture be taught in schools? 
Mr. Mann’s little book is a serious attempt to 
show that a great deal can be done to educate the 
American child through the experience that it has, 
or can easily get, of farm life, and, further, that 
the thing can be done without doing any violence 
to the exigencies of village school conditions or 
assuming too much from the teacher. That he has 
achieved a certain measure of success is undeni- 
able; how much can only be ascertained by actual 
use in a school. 
Setting out with the assumption, probable 
enough throughout wide areas of the western 
States, that the child is a member of a new com- 
munity the older members of which broke up the 
prairie, the author begins with a history of a 
typical community and shows the  interde- 
pendence of the various sections. But of all the 
members the farmer is the most important, because 
he is the producer of food and of clothing material. 
Hence farming is an honourable occupation; it 
NO. 2216, VOL. 89] 
has, besides, many collateral advantages over other 
professions. But if it is to be done properly it 
must be well organised. The farm should be laid 
out so that the farmer will lose little time in 
getting to his work, and can take full ad- 
vantage of natural features specially adapted 
to any particular treatment. Further, the farm 
should be attractive and beautiful, with a 
“neat and picked-up appearance,’ to use the 
author’s expressive Western phrase. So much for 
generalities; the author then passes on to deal with 
the special factors in agriculture, the farm plants, 
the soil, and the animals. Liberal use is made of 
photographs, and at the end of each chapter a 
number of problems are set for the scholars to 
work out, some arithmetical, some observational, 
and some experimental. Thus the child is taught 
to observe and to think—in other words, he is 
educated—and at the same time he learns to think 
in terms of country things and acquires a stock 
of knowledge that cannot fail to be helpful to him 
afterwards. He is shown that country life and 
country work are interesting, and he has their 
other attractive features put before him in a very 
pleasing way. 
The book will prove interesting to education- 
ists in this country who are seriously studying our 
rural educational problems, and it will be appre- 
ciated most by those who have some knowledge of 
the American child, with its strangely serious 
outlook on life and its premature realisation of its 
responsibilities. 
Prof. Eckles’s book on dairy cattle deals with 
a specialised branch of agriculture in a manner 
well suited to the requirements of the advanced 
student. The animals described in detail are 
Holsteins, Jerseys and Guernseys, Ayrshires, and 
Brown Swiss as pure dairy cows, and Shorthorns 
as dual-purpose cows. A short but sufficient 
history of the breed is followed by an account of 
its chief characteristics and typical requirements. 
Photographs of good pedigree animals are given, 
and finally a score card is set out showing the 
number of marks to be allotted to each of the 
various points in estimating relative values. This 
feature is specially useful. The score card is a 
well-recognised method of instruction in the 
States, where it has repeatedly justified itself by 
its results; one or two teachers of agriculture have 
adopted it in this country also, and wherever it has 
been tried it has been found advantageous. Any- 
thing, therefore, that popularises so useful an 
instrument is to be commended. 
A good deal of attention is devoted to feeding. 
The author considers it safe to say that “the 
yearly average milk production per cow could be 
increased one-half or three-fourths by following 
