in incorporated villages, towns, and cities. The educational leaders have been concerned with the enlargement of colleges, the improvement of the schools in towns and cities, and the adjustment of them to the needs of urban populations. Little attempt has been made to reform or enrich the course of study or the methods of training at rural schools, which are admittedly less efficient for the needs of the time than they were twenty-five years ago. These and other reasons caused Sir W. C. Macdonald, of Montreal, to devote large sums of money to what may be called 'object-lessons,' rather than experiments, towards the betterment of elementary and secondary schools. He had already befriended advanced education at McGill University in a princely way.
Manual Training.—As a first step towards reaching the rural schools, he furnished the money to extend manual training (in most cases to introduce it) in the public schools of the various provinces. Manual training centres were equipped, and competent teachers of experience were employed at twenty-one different places from Prince Edward Island on the Atlantic to Vancouver and Victoria on the Pacific. The Macdonald Manual Training Fund maintained the object-lesson for three years. At the end of that time the equipment was presented to the local and provincial school authorities, who have since maintained and further extended the work. Under the Macdonald Fund some 7,000 boys took manual training, and several hundred teachers attended short courses on Saturdays or on other school holidays. Now it is reported that 20,000 children attend manual training classes as a direct consequence of the Macdonald movement.
School Gardens.—The next step was to establish 'object-lesson' school gardens at twenty-five rural schools as a basis for Nature study. They are giving the schools a rural outlook and the pupils a wholesome interest in, and an intelligent acquaintance with, the forces and phenomena of their surroundings. At the
