1908.] Instruction in Rural Subjects. 749 



proportional to the importance of agriculture, and it is in the 

 rich industrial counties where a large population has swelled 

 the county exchequer, and contact with other industries has 

 stimulated the intelligence of the agriculturist, that agricul- 

 tural education is most liberally aided. 



Instruction in special subjects in public elementary schools 

 is fostered by the system of making special grants, and it 

 appears from the report of the Board of 

 Instruction in Rural Education for 1906-7 that considerable 

 Subjects in Elementary progress is being made in the teaching of 

 Schools. rural subjects, such as gardening, fruit- 



culture and dairy work. 



Gardening. — In the teaching of gardening there has been 

 a great increase ; the total number of boys on account of 

 whom grants were paid for instruction in this subject having 

 been 11,216 in 1905-6 as compared with 8,359 i* 1 I 9°4~5 an d 

 5,695 in 1903-4. The increase was almost entirely in the 

 number taking the short course. 



The number of schools in county areas which applied for 

 a grant in the subject in 1906-7 was over 900 as compared 

 with 371 earning a grant in 1903-4. In every English county, 

 with the exception of the Soke of Peterborough and Rutland, 

 gardening is taught. The increase is almost entirely confined 

 to those counties in which a horticultural lecturer has been 

 appointed, part of whose duties it is to organize and supervise 

 school gardening, and to train school teachers to teach it. 

 This is the case in Staffordshire and Surrey which have 98 and 

 79 recognised school gardens respectively. Moreover, it is 

 in the counties, now upwards of twenty, that possess such a 

 horticultural lecturer, that school gardening is, as a rule, best 

 carried out. Evidence continues to be received of the useful 

 effect of gardening on the general work of the school. 



Nature Study.— -A defect in most of the school gardening was 

 that as it was not dealt with as a branch of nature-study, i.e., 

 as a study of the plant in relation to environment, the oppor- 

 tunity of developing the general intelligence of the scholars 

 in rural work was largely lost. An attempt has been 

 made in certain counties to provide a remedy by issuing 



