In fact, they are engaged during their leisure hours in a variety of experiments, all of which tend to an industrial turn of mind, benefiting not only the lad and the school, but also the government, by preparing for the future men who will be serviceable and industrious in their station.
Here is a lesson for the government which, if carried out on an extensive scale, would work a greater change in the colony within the next twenty years than all the preaching of the last fifty.
Throughout Ceylon, in every district, there should be established one school upon this principle for every hundred boys, and a small tract of land granted to each.

One should be attached to the botanical gardens at Peredenia, and instruction should be given to enable every school to perform its own experiments in agriculture.

By this means, in the course of a few years we should secure an educated and useful population, in lieu of the present indolent and degraded race: an improved system of cultivation, new products, a variety of trades, and, in fact, a test of the capabilities of the country would be ensured, without risk to the government, and to the ultimate prosperity of the colony.

Heathenism could not exist in such a state of affairs; it would die out.

Minds exalted by education upon such a system would look with ridicule upon the vestiges of former idolatry, and the rocky idols would remain without a worshiper, while a new generation flocked to the Christian altar.
This is no visionary prospect.