860 
Publications of Interest to Agriculturists. 
English education ; with the result that, of every thousand 
educated natives in India, only four have received any form of 
technical instruction. 
Dr. Voelcker’s Report will gradually change all this, and the 
people of India are ripe for the change. They are beginning to 
take an extraordinary interest in their own industrial develop- 
ment, the only solid foundation for their national regeneration, 
and the only guarantee for the continuity of their historical 
individuality and idiosyncratic civilisation ; the destruction of 
which would be the greatest crime Great Britain could commit 
against humanity. Our Anglicising system of education has only 
had the effect of creating a semi- denationalised literary class for 
whom no adequate livelihood can be found in India ; but the system 
of education insisted on by Dr. Voelcker, based on the study of the 
methods of native industries, side by side with the study of the 
improved scientific processes of Europe and America, would afford a 
provision in life for every educated Hindu and Mussulman in 
Bengal, Madras, and Bombay for a full millennium to come ; and 
within a generation render India independent of nearly every one 
of the manufactured articles now imported into the country, at so 
great an economic sacrifice, from abroad. So true are the epithets 
Aristophanes applies to agriculture : “ The bringer of peace to 
men, and their faithful nurse, housewife, helper, guardian, daughter, 
and beloved sister.” That Dr. Yoelcker has seen this so clearly in 
relation to the future of India is, among the many aspects of his 
Report commanding attention, its highest claim to the consideration of 
English statesmen, and to their abiding recognition and gratitude. 
George Birdwood. 
II. AGRARIAN TENURES . 1 
We have recently heard less of Reform of the Land Laws in this 
country than we did some years ago, probably in part because other 
more burning political questions have come to the front, and also 
because what are known as Lord Cairns’s Acts have unostentatiously 
done good work in the direction of simplifying the transfer of land 
and bestowing freedom of sale upon owners of settled land. On the 
other hand, since the enfranchisement of the agricultural labourer 
the desirability of enabling labourers to obtain allotments in cases 
where they have not already got them, and of increasing the number 
of small holdings of agricultural land throughout the country, has 
occupied the attention of men of all parties, and resulted in legis- 
lative enactments. The book before us, therefore, coming as it does 
from the present First Commissioner of Works and Chairman of the 
Royal Com mission on Agricultural Depression, and professing to deal 
1 Agrarian Tenures. A Survey of the Laws and Customs relating to the 
Holding of Land in England, Ireland, and Scotland, and of the Reforms therein 
during recent Years. By the Right Hon. G. Shaw Lefevre, M.P. London : 
Cassell & Co., Ltd. 1893. 
