224 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 



A number of our teaching institutions have been con- 

 cerned of late years with the difficult task of training 

 agricultural students ; and the framing of courses em- 

 bodying science and practice in suitable proportions has 

 engaged the attention and led to the co-operation of 

 professional scientists and "practical" men, not always 

 with the happiest result. Huxley's views on the subject 

 are indicated in a letter to the Yorkshire Herald (April 

 II, 1 891), answering questions asked by Mr. J. Harri- 

 son, who had been preparing a paper on " Technical 

 Education as applied to Agriculture " for the Easingwold 

 Agricultural Club : — 



" I am afraid that my opinion upon the subject of your inquiry 

 is worth very little — my ignorance of practical agricultme being 

 profound. However, there are some general principles which 

 apply to all technical training ; the first of these, I think, is that 

 practice is to be learned only by practice. The farmer must be 

 made by and through farm work. I believe I might be able to 

 give you a fair account of a bean plant and of the manner and 

 condition of its growth, but if I were to try to raise a crop of 

 beans, your club would probably laugh consumedly at the result. 

 Nevertheless, I believe that you practical people would be all the 

 better for the scientific knowledge which does not enable me to 

 grow beans. It would keep you from attempting hopeless 

 experiments, and would enable you to take advantage of the 

 innumerable hints which Dame Nature gives to people who live 

 in direct contact with things. And this leads me to the second 

 general principle, which I think applies to all technical teaching 

 for school-boys and school-girls, and that is, that they should be 

 led from the observation of the commonest facts to general 

 scientific truths. If I were called upon to frame a course of 

 elementary instruction preparatory to agriculture, I am not sure 

 I should attempt chemistry, or botany, or physiology, or geology, 

 as such. It is a method fraught with the danger of spending 

 too much time and attention on abstraction and theories, on 

 words and notions instead of things. The history of a bean, of 

 a grain of wheat, of a turnip, of a sheep, of a pig, or of a cow, 

 properly treated — with the introduction of the elements of 



