18

EDUCATION.

plants are distributed to country schools ; in it new products
from other countries are also cultivated experimentally.
The scheme has received most valuable assistance from the
Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Peradeniya and
from the Revenue Officers in many of the districts in which
the schools are situated. It is hoped that it will do real
service to the country by giving the schoolboy something
more than mere book learning, and by fitting him both in
hand and eve for rural life.

Higher Education.

Something has been said with regard to the first steps
;aken by Government and by Mission bodies for the
asstablishment of institutions devoted to higher education.

ST, JOSEPHS COLLEGE, COLOMBO.

Since that date much progress has been made. In 1853 the
Church of lingland founded, in close connection with the
Cathedral, St. Thomas’s College, which now has an honourable
 history of half a century of good work. Other Mission
bodies have followed suit, and there are now four large
institutions in Colombo, while Kandy, Galle, and Jaffna
sach have two or three colleges and high schools. The
above illustration gives a partial view of the buildings of
gt, Joseph's, the latest of the Colombo colleges.