Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 79.djvu/392

388 in agriculture. The biologists, especially, are gravitating toward the use of the familiar things with which agriculture must deal. If the agriculturists do not take advantage of this it will be their own fault. For if the scientists are to assume that part of the burden for the sake of the sciences, such "loss of jurisdiction" over their subject should not be taken amiss by the agriculturists, who may rest assured that the others have no means of cheating so as to achieve their "disciplinary" results wthoutwithout [sic] thereby doing that which is best for agriculture. Only in making the two phases of work complementary is agriculture securing a permanent place in the course. It may be that keeping the two interests uncorrelated will not only result in the continued decadence of high school science, but will also keep the subject of agriculture pedagogically outside the course of study, however much pains may be used to print it in. Agriculture in the high school will bear one of three relations to the fundamental sciences, namely, it will be taught before the related sciences are taught, or while they are being taught, or after they have been taught.

The success of agriculture in the high school depends upon its being made of such dignity as to challenge the powers of the better students. And the better students will not be attracted to a subject that is long kept in its elementary stages. There is more to lose than to gain in