ever.

But I would, whether a field-club existed or not, require of every
young man entering the army or navy--indeed of every young man
entering any liberal profession whatsoever--a fair knowledge, such
as would enable him to pass an examination, in what the Germans call
Erd-kunde--earth-lore--in that knowledge of the face of the earth
and of its products, for which we English have as yet cared so
little that we have actually no English name for it, save the clumsy
and questionable one of physical geography; and, I am sorry to say,
hardly any readable school books about it, save Keith Johnston's
"Physical Atlas"--an acquaintance with which last I should certainly
require of young men.

It does seem most strange--or rather will seem most strange a
hundred years hence--that we, the nation of colonists, the nation of
sailors, the nation of foreign commerce, the nation of foreign
military stations, the nation of travellers for travelling's sake,
the nation of which one man here and another there--as Schleiden
sets forth in his book, "The Plant," in a charming ideal
conversation at the Travellers' Club--has seen and enjoyed more of
the wonders and beauties of this planet than the men of any nation,
not even excepting the Germans--that this nation, I say, should as
yet have done nothing, or all but nothing, to teach in her schools a
knowledge of that planet, of which she needs to know more, and can
if she will know more, than any other nation upon it.

As for the practical utility of such studies to a soldier, I only
need, I trust, to hint at it to such an assembly as this. All must
see of what advantage a rough knowledge of the botany of a district
would be to an officer leading an exploring party, or engaged in
bush warfare. To know what plants are poisonous; what plants, too,
are eatable--and many more are eatable than is usually supposed;
what plants yield oleaginous substances, whether for food or for
other uses; what plants yield vegetable acids, as preventives of
scurvy; what timbers are available for each of many different
purposes; what will resist wet, salt-water, and the attacks of
insects; what, again, can be used, at a pinch, for medicine or for
styptics--and be sure, as a wise West Indian doctor once said to me,
that there is more good medicine wild in the bush than there is in
all the druggists' shops--surely all this is a knowledge not beneath
the notice of any enterprising officer, above all of an off