Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/66

Rh that a separate report for each will be unnecessary. When I shall have gone the tour of a province, as of Bengal, Behar, Allahabad, or Agra, it would seem proper that I should then furnish a general report, condensing the details of the previous district reports, confirming and amplifying or qualifying and correcting the statements and opinions they contain by the results of more comprehensive observation, and drawing those general conclusions which can be safely grounded only on an extensive induction of particulars. A general report upon school books and books of instruction, or a separate report upon those in each language, distinguishing those that are most useful, pointing out when labor and money have been misapplied, to prevent a recurrence of the same evil, and indicating the department of knowledge in which chiefly defects remain to be supplied, is also a desideratum.

9. It will be for your Lordship to determine the limits as to space and time within which this investigation is to be conducted. It may either be limited to the provinces of Bengal, Behar, and the two districts of Midnapore and Cuttack in Orissa subject to the Presidency of Fort William, or, according to the pleasure of your Lordship and the Home Authorities, it may be extended to the provinces subject to the Presidency of Agra. 7 The moral and intellectual condition of the latter is less fully and less accurately known than even that of the former. If experience shall show that the information collected regarding the Bengal and Agra Presidencies is useful, the enquiry might be extended to the other Presidencies. With regard to time, I have no other data to guide me than those which are afforded by the fact that Dr. Francis Buchanan was appointed by the Government of the Marquis Wellesley to investigate the agricultural and commercial statistics of the provinces then subject to the Presidency of Fort William, and that, according to my information, he employed the years 1805, 1806, and 1807 in his re-searches. Considering the necessity and importance of care in authenticating, and deliberation in reporting, facts on the subject of education in this country; the difficulties which may