734 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 
(iii) Colonisation of English Women in Western Canada. 
By Mrs. Hopkinson. 
There are many girls now training in England who would be most 
admirably fitted to settle here. Girls with good school education, who in 
their later educational years do not turn to the women’s colleges of a 
purely educational character with a view of ultimately becoming teachers, 
or to other indoor occupations, but by temperament and strong desire are 
led to seek outdoor pursuits in the hope and certainty of being able thus 
and more agreeably to themselves to earn their own living. 
Opportunities are given for such outdoor training at various institutions 
in England, the one I am more nearly connected with being the Swanley 
Horticultural College in Kent for girls, which in 1891 threw its doors open 
to women, and ultimately became exclusively a women’s college. Here are 
taught horticulture in all its branches, fruit culture, bee-keeping, dairy 
work, poultry-keeping, market gardening, sale of produce, landscape 
gardening, and nature study. And at the colonial branch of this college 
all the various domestic pursuits in simple form are taught, to fit the girls 
for colonial life. I read in the admirable paper the Principal of Swanley 
College lately gave at the International Union of Women Workers’ meeting 
in this country, that of Swanley students holding posts out of England one 
is a head gardener in Canada and one in Nova Scotia. Another had charge 
of a few large school gardens in a town in South Africa, which she has 
laid out and planted. One is an apiarist at a State farm in New Zealand. 
Two are lecturers on gardening schools in Germany. Another has started 
a small horticultural school in Switzerland, and yet another a similar one 
in Sweden. 
We know that not a few of those still at home are fired with enthusiasm, 
and are prepared to try their future here and help with the development 
of the country; even prepared to introduce a little capital if suitable 
settlements are established—say, on a moderate acreage of land ready 
for cultivation, and so in a condition to return income speedily—with a 
dwelling-house on the land; a settlement, in short, to which they could 
come for some preliminary training in local conditions, bringing with them 
their English knowledge of the outdoor occupations of which I have spoken. 
Thence they could pass on, possibly to gardens of their own, or to posts as 
home helps, with the trained outdoor knowledge, which must be indeed 
useful to anyone in this country of growth and fertility. Such settlements 
or training centres would also form a home—essential to those with few 
friends in a new country—to which they could return in holiday time or 
in case of loss or of interrupted occupation, the conditions of such return 
to be made very easy. 
I know in England we could send out the right women and suitable 
lady superintendents to manage such homes. We believe that settlements 
like these would help both countries by introducing the right girls here and 
relieving the pressure over there. 
T throw out these suggestions in case any strong hand from here will be 
held out to us to help in the expansion of this work. We would do our 
utmost to further it in England, and you will see we have made a hopeful 
beginning here. 
(iv) Practical Work in Higher Education. By Miss H. D. Oaxtey. 
The subject under discussion, that of the movement for introducing 
more practical outlook into higher education, seems to me, in spite of its 
utilitarian appearance, eminently philosophical. For throughout all the 
schemes it is the end, the goal, which is directing and regulating the 
means. With reference to the disintegration of home life, to which the 
President referred, the home science and economic scheme is an effort to 
