360 
The late Thomas Aveling. 
succeeded in demonstrating the ability of the engine to climb 
up the greasy incline without burying the wheels, carrying the 
reaping machine with her." Here is a practical illustration 
of two of Mr. Aveling's most prominent characteristics. 
Mr. Aveling was elected a Member of the Council in 1875, 
and immediately made his mark as a man possessing sound 
common sense, strength of will, and fertility of resource. 
Elected chiefly on account of his reputation as an agricultural 
engineer devoted to a branch of the profession which was not 
then represented on the Council, he was soon afterwards ap- 
pointed a member of other Committees than the Implement 
Committee, to which he was naturally nominated in the first 
instance. It is difficult to say whether he brought more energy 
to bear upon that Committee or upon the Chemical, the Educa- 
tion, or the Showyard Contracts Committee ; but it is quite 
certain that his name will be most distinctly associated in the 
annals of the Society with his successful efforts to establish a 
chemical laboratory belonging to the Society in Hanover Square. 
His view was that the Council would invest profitably a certain 
amount of the Society's capital in the building and fitting up of 
such a laboratory, even if the fees for analysis were reduced to 
one-half of their previous amounts. Once possessed of the idea, 
he never rested until the laboratory was built ; and he spared 
no pains to elaborate schemes, draw plans, make calculations, 
and in fact to produce a perfectly workable arrangement, which 
the Council eventually adopted, to the lasting benefit of the 
members of the Society. 
On the Education Committee Mr. Aveling was equally 
energetic and characteristic. He hit the great blot on our 
system of primary education in rural districts by showing that 
the farm labourers' children are taught a great deal that will be 
of little use to them in after life as agricultural labourers, with 
comparatively little that would be of use to them if they 
followed the vocation of their fathers. He was an earnest 
advocate for replacing the reading books and diagrams now 
in use in rural schools by others illustrating agricultural sub- 
jects and objects. Few members of Council who were 
present on the occasion will forget his exhibition of diagrams 
taken from a Board-school wall, showing that an idea of zoology 
was sought to be conveyed by means of a picture of the Duck- 
billed Platypus ; the structure of a cow or a horse (he confessed 
he did not know which), by the exhibition of a picture of the 
skeleton of an extinct elephant, and so forth. Similarly, he 
showed the inapplicability of the existing text-books to the 
education of children in agricultural districts, and asked why 
a dog, a cat, a cow, a sheep, and a horse should not be as good 
