Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/425

 So our great nobility, our Dukes, Earls and others, even Royalty itself, are many of them admirable farmers, and take the liveliest practical interest in the development of all that concerns the soil. Here it seems to me you have a most splendid opening for the educated youths of this country, and as Government has instituted an Agricultural College in Madras (and if I had any voice in the matter I would make the teaching of agriculture compulsory in all our Normal schools) there is no excuse for some of you not following this science. Of what may be done in this way two examples occur to me as I write, and had I time I have no doubt numberless other instances could be adduced. Thirty years ago, Wynaad was a jungle, the home only of elephants, wild boar, sambur and fever. It was almost a " terra incognita," save to the adventurous travellers who made a short cut through it from the Western Coast to Mysore. It is now the home of hundreds of venturesome and intelligent Englishmen, who employ thousands of your fellow-countrymen in the cultivation of coffee and cinchona. The dense juugles are gradually being converted into fruitful plantations, and I presume the value of the property may now be estimated at millions ! And from cultivation fever flies! Are there not countless tracts of land in India waiting only industry and science to be thus converted into smiling gardens, amply repaying, as Nature always generously repays those who cultivate her? How cultivation affects even climates and calls down as it were rain from Heaven, I may cite to you the singular change which has come over that tract of land through which the Suez Canal has been cut. Hitherto rain was quite unknown there, but now ever and again the astonished Arab is witness of what to him would have been formerly a strange phenomenon, a refreshing shower. Is it not possible, and even probable that well-directed industry in planting forests, damming our rivers, opening up ii-rigation works and making tanks, would thus beneficially change our climate in Southern India, and avert our Rain Famines ?

But time will not permit me to pursue the subject further. I have said enough, I think, to convince you that medicine is not a science which the people of India, of all people, and especially the Brahmins, should despise or neglect. It originated with you, and the prejudices which now debar you from its study had no existence in your olden age. It is essentially a study worthy of the noblest faculties of man, and one which the