above his head; provided always that he learnt, not at second-hand from books, but where alone he can really learn either war or nature—­in the field; by actual observation, actual experiment.  A laboratory for chemical experiment is a good thing, it is true, as far as it goes; but I should prefer to the laboratory a naturalists’ field club, such as are prospering now at several of the best public schools, certain that the boys would get more of sound inductive habits of mind, as well as more health, manliness, and cheerfulness, amid scenes to remember which will be a joy for ever, than they ever can by bending over retorts and crucibles, amid smells even to remember which is a pain for ever.

But I would, whether a field club existed or not, require of every young man entering the army or navy—­indeed of every young man entering any liberal profession whatsoever—­a fair knowledge, such as would enable him to pass an examination, in what the Germans call Erd-kunde—­earth-lore—­in that knowledge of the face of the earth and of its products, for which we English have as yet cared so little that we have actually no English name for it, save the clumsy and questionable one of physical geography; and, I am sorry to say, hardly any readable school books about it, save Keith Johnston’s ’Physical Atlas’—­an acquaintance with which last I should certainly require of young men.

It does seem most strange—­or rather will seem most strange 100 years hence—­that we, the nation of colonists, the nation of sailors, the nation of foreign commerce, the nation of foreign military stations, the nation of travellers for travelling’s sake, the nation of which one man here and another there—­as Schleiden sets forth in his book, ‘The Plant,’ in a charming ideal conversation at the Travellers’ Club—­has seen and enjoyed more of the wonders and beauties of this planet than the men of any nation, not even excepting the Germans—­that this nation, I say, should as yet have done nothing, or all but nothing, to teach in her schools a knowledge of that planet, of which she needs to know more, and can if she will know more, than any other nation upon it.

As for the practical utility of such studies to a soldier, I only need, I trust, to hint at it to such an assembly as this.  All must see of what advantage a rough knowledge of the botany of a district would be to an officer leading an exploring party, or engaged in bush warfare.  To know what plants are poisonous; what plants, too, are eatable—­and many more are eatable than is usually supposed; what plants yield oleaginous substances, whether for food or for other uses; what plants yield vegetable acids, as preventives of scurvy; what timbers are available for each of many different purposes; what will resist wet, salt-water, and the attacks of insects; what, again, can be used, at a pinch, for medicine or for styptics—­and be sure, as a wise West Indian doctor once said to me, that there is more good medicine wild in the bush