Notes and Comments. 313 
by collectors of medicinal plants generally. | And while it is 
not the most favourable time to voice the claims of protection 
of wild plants, one may express the hope that the collector’s 
zeal will be accompanied by discretion.’ 
EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE SECTION. 
The Rev. W. Temple, in his address to the Educational 
Science Section, touches an interesting topic. He says, © The 
present interest of Englishmen in education is partly due to 
the fact that they are impressed by German thoroughness. 
Now let there be no mistake. The war has shown the effective- 
ness of German education in certain departments of life, but 
it has shown not only its ineffectiveness but its grotesque 
absurdity in regard to other departments of life, and those 
the departments which are, even in a political sense, the most 
important. In the crganisation of material resources, Germany 
has won well-merited UTE but in regard to moral 
conduct, and with regard to all that art of dealing with other 
men and other nations aihear is closely allied to moral conduct, 
she has won for herself the horror of the civilized world. If 
you take the whole result, and ask whether we prefer German 
or English education, I, at any rate, should not hesitate in my 
reply. With all its faults, English education is a thing gener- 
ically superior to the German. It is to perfect our own, and 
not to imitate theirs, that we must now exert ourselves.’ 
AGRICULTURAL SECTION. 
Dr E. J. Russell, in his address to the Agricultural Section, 
demonstrates the necessity for a scientific training in agricul- 
tural matters. ‘ We are met this year under peculiar ee 
such as may never recur in our history. We have had < 
demonstration, more striking than ever before, of the vital fits 
that agriculture plays in the life of the community ; we have 
seen how in time of war, the supply of food might easily become 
the factor determining the issue, and it is already clear that in 
time of peace a vigorous rural civilisation is indispensable to 
the stability of the social structure of the nation. 1am going 
to deal with the possibilities and the prospects of increased crop 
production, which, both in its narrow aspect as a source of 
national wealth, and its wider significance as the material 
basis of rural civilisation, must always remain one of the most 
important of human activities. We may take it as an axiom 
that the developments of the future will in the main grow out 
of those of the past. There are no breaks in the continuity 
of progress in agriculture; the farmer’s unit of time—the 
four-or-five-year rotation—is too big to allow of sudden jumps 
and short cuts from one stage to another ; and so, if we want 
to find the most promising lines of progress for the future, we 
must first discover the lines along which progress has been 
made in the past.’ 
1916 Oct. 1. 
