NEGLECT OF THE NATURAL SCIENCES IN EDUCATION. 11 
Without admitting the truth of this opinion, we might yet have 
the evil rectified, if we found, that though soldiers and civilians 
neglected, some of these studies were ptrsued by planters and 
colonists, merchants and manufacturers. This is so far from 
being the case, that I was induced in another work to observe, 
that “the generality of modern experimentalists seem to be 
unacquainted with the lahours of their predecessors, many of 
them commencing improvement by repeating experiments 
which had already been made, and announcing results as new 
which had long previously been ascertained.” 
We certainly now hear everywhere of the establishment of 
Schools where the principles of chemistry, of vegetable and 
animal structure, and physiology, are to be taught on account 
of their application to the improvement of gardening and of 
farming : while Trade Museums are being established to inform 
the manufacturer and merchant of the innumerable, to them 
useful substances, which nature everywhere produces, and which 
man so frequently neglects. From the general inattention, 
moreover, to such subjects, the short Reports and Essays which 
have been written on different useful products, are soon for- 
gotten, and disappear from circulation. And, though great 
books have been pronounced to be great evils, small ones are 
like writings on the sand, which the waves of time obliterate, 
or remove so out of sight, as to be discovered only by the more 
diligent students of nature. 
By some it has been said, that if these Indian fibres possess 
any useful properties, or can be afforded at reasonable rates, 
and there is any demand for them, that they will be sure to 
find their way to market. But others inquire, If there are such 
things, why don’t they come to us? To this we may reply, 
that of the useful properties of many of these products there 
can be no doubt, as will be shown in the course of these pages, 
They are abundant, or may easily be cultivated, and can be 
supplied at rates to contend successfully with similar productions 
from other countries. Mr. Henley has lately shown, that fibrous 
materials may be supplied in Bengal at about four shillings 
a maund,! which is also the price of the true hemp in the 
Himalayas. Of the demand we may judge from the endless 
' See Plantain, Jute, Sunn, and Hemp, for the prices at which fibres may be 
obtained in India. 
