So deeply impressed was I of the immense importance of this subject, and of the necessity of providing in our school system for a practical solution of the question which was then, and is now, of pressing importance--viz., manual training in our schools--that in 1876 I prepared and delivered a lecture on the subject, in various parts of the Province. The lecture was founded on the industrial lessons taught to us so impressively at the Centennial Exhibition, Philadelphia, in 1876. These lessons, in their educational aspects, were even more forcibly impressed upon me at the great Industrial Exhibition held in New Orleans, in 1885. Having been there six weeks, as an Educational Juror, on behalf of the United States Bureau of Education, I had abundant and admirable facilities for studying the whole question, and for seeing how it was being worked out (more or less effectually) in the various national school systems which came under review during that enquiry--especially in France. Thus the French school law of 1882 provides that "primary education includes [among other things] the elements of the natural, physical and mathematical sciences, and their application to agriculture, to hygiene, and to the industrial art; manual work, and the use of tools of the principal trades, the elements of drawing, modelling, etc." Apprenticeship schools have also been established, the object of which is to form workmen, as distinguished from foremen, and in which various trades are taught. An official report, published by the United States Bureau of Education in 1882, states that the apprentices of these schools "find employment readily after they have left the workshops, at wages, it is said, varying from five to even as much as eight francs per day." In discussing this question in the lecture to which I have referred, these passages occur:-- "It is not assumed that every pupil in our schools is qualified, or that he should be compelled, as a matter of course, to engage in the study of elementary science or practical drawing. Far from it. But what I do say is, that those pupils who exhibit a taste for any of the various subjects of natural history, elementary science or practical mechanics, should have an opportunity in the Public and High Schools (of cities and large towns) of learning something about them. In an address by Mr. Gladstone on this subject, he stated that the boys of the English schools, and it is so in our schools, had not yet had fair play in the study of elementary science and natural history.... "There are few schools in which there are not boys possessing talent scientific, inventive, or industrial talent, or constructive genius, which are never evoked, much less aroused or stimulated. As to the question whether for the few the country should be put to the expense of their special training, I answer it in the words of Professor Huxley, who says:--