Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/137

 During the two years which have elapsed since I last addressed the Convocation, the two previously existing institutions relating to the applied sciences, namely. Medicine and Civil Engineering—the Engineering College at Poona, with its workshops forming a technical school, and the Grant Medical College at Bombay—have been fostered and improved, and have been recognized by the University as qualified to send up candidates for the new Science Degree. Several lesser institutions have been brought into existence. Two new medical schools have been established—one at Poona for the Deccan, one at Ahmedabad for Gujarat. The importance of hygiene and sanitary science has been pressed on the attention of both teachers and students. We have encouraged medical education, not only because medicine is a rising profession which, with the progress of sanitation, may attain indefinite development, but also because medical men, in order to qualify themselves for their own profession, have to learn much of some of those very sciences which we desire to impart largely to the Natives. A school of scientific forestry has been opened at Poona in connexion with a Botanic Garden, which garden has been formed out of the old garden established for the culture of medicinal herbs. A commencement has been made of what we hope will one day become a system of national education in scientific agriculture. Several school classes have been opened in different parts of the country, and a class has been successfully added to the Engineering College at Poona for superior instruction in agricultural practice. The College has been empowered by Government to grant certificates of proficiency to those who pass an examination after going through the higher agricultural course. It was at first proposed that this University should confer degrees in agriculture; but after some consideration the Syndicate decided not to include it in our scheme of degrees, deeming that under the circumstances the College certificates will suffice. The Poona Engineering College is, indeed, becoming a College of Science, inasmuch as engineering, geology, chemistry, botany, forestry, agriculture, are more or less taught there. A chair of biology has been established in the Elphinstone College. Some steps have been taken to develop the zoological section of the Victoria Museum in connexion with what is the nucleus of a zoological garden adjoining the Museum. The Technical School of Art at Bombay has been maintained and encouraged.

The third topic relates to instruction in moral philosophy or Instruction in ethics, or the Science of human duty. Though necessarily precluded from adverting to religion, I