136 TiMEHRI. 



hence every system of education ought to make provi- 

 sions for teaching the principles of agriculture. Which 

 is more beneficial to our lads — especially those of the 

 country distrifls — to be able to enumerate without a 

 mii^take the Kings of England with the dates of their 

 accession, or to determine the best crops which could be 

 raised on the soil around their homesteads? Which is 

 preferable? That our grown-up girls be capable of 

 solving with ease and rapidity difficult problems in 

 Profit and Loss, or to know the best method of scalding 

 an egg or keeping meat fresh ? Yet in none of the 

 regulations for the government of Primary Schools are 

 provisions made for instru6lion in the A B C of agri- 

 culture or instilling into the minds of our girls the 

 principles of Domestic Economy or Cookery ? The 

 result is that year by year the schools turn out lads 

 who, for want of knowing better, look with contempt 

 mingled with scorn and disgust on the shovel and the 

 hoe, and spend weeks and even months in bombarding 

 the counting-houses of merchants, or gazing with envious 

 and regretful eye on sallow and consumptive-looking 

 clerks behind the counter of some dry goods store. And 

 the young girls, — the groans of the housekeepers of 

 British Guiana yearly ascend on account of the serious 

 loss and positive suffering endured at the hands of care- 

 less and ignorant domestics. But even the dire6lion in 

 which attempts have been made to educate the children, 

 nothing but complete and lamentable failure is experi- 

 enced in the majority of cases. How can the mind be 

 properly trained and developed by seedy and impecu- 

 nious teachers who feel their position insecure, who are 

 summarily dismissed should they speak sharply to care- 



