264 ESSEX AND THE TECHNICAL INSTRUCTION ACT.
yet to be developed, and the scheme put forward by the Essex Field
Club, to which we have already briefly alluded in these columns,
certainly seems to be sufficiently comprehensive to meet the wants
of the case. Of the qualifications of the Club to carry on the work
effectively it is not within our province to speak. It will suffice to
say that the deputation from the Club, which was received by the
County Council on February 2, comprised Sir Henry Roscoe, Profs.
W. H. Flower, R. Meldola, and G. S. Boulger, Mr. F. W. Rudler,
and others interested in the scheme. Lord Rayleigh, although
unable to attend personally, had consented to allow his name to be
added to the committee.
" The members of the deputation, whose scientific strength is
unquestionable, expressed their approbation of the scheme, and
spoke in the highest terms of the work hitherto done by the Club ;
and if their expression of opinion is allowed that weight which it
undoubtedly carries, there can be no doubt that Essex possesses in
the Field Club an organisation which the County Council would do
well to avail themselves of. The scheme itself, which was formally
submitted by the deputation, will be found in abstract in another
portion of our columns. How nearly it falls in with the views of
those most competent to speak authoritatively on the question will
be gathered from the speech made by Sir W. Hart-Dyke at the
recent Conference of the National Association for the Promotion of
Technical and Secondary Education, in the course of which he said :
'To my mind the only practical way in which to carry on agricultural
teaching is to have a central system. You must, I think, group to-
gether different villages and different schools, and have peripatetic
teachers. If you do this you will find that the extra cost to school
managers on the one hand, and to the ratepayers on the other, will
be very small indeed, and yet you will be able to carry out an excel-
lent system of agricultural education.' An institution such as the
Essex Field Club proposes to establish in connection with their
Museum at Chelmsford would meet these views exactly."