THE difficult problem of catering for the educational needs of remote and isolated rural districts has been dealt with practically in this country by such enlightened benefactors as the Countess of Warwick in her school at Bigods, near Dunmow, in Essex, which has been carrying on its useful work for some five years, and which is now about to be madfj still more strictly into a school of agriculture, so as to bring it into harmony with the requirements of the district and of the counties which it serves1. Lady Warwick's sister, the Duchess of Sutherland, has faced the still more difficult problem of providing a technical school for the Highlands of Scotland, and a preliminary account of the first scheme was given in these columns at the time of its inception (NATURE, vol. lxv. p. 106, December 5, 1901). The work thus set going by Her Grace was formally inaugurated on September 8 by Lord Balfour of Burleigh, Secretary for Scotland, at a public ceremony held for the purpose of laying the memorial stone. The building, the design of which is by Mr. Dick Peddie, of Edinburgh, is already several feet above its foundations, and is situated on the picturesque slope of a hill overlooking the little town of Golspie, on the shore of Dornoch Firth, and within two miles of the beautiful grounds of Dunrobin Castle, the Scottish home of the Sutherlands. The main feature? of the educational scheme, as set forth in the statement published in our first notice, have been adhered to, but the details of a curriculum suitable for requirements of such a very diverse nature as have to be met in this' remote Highland district can only be worked out by actual experience—it will be a case, as Lord Balfour said at the meeting, of solvitur ambulando. How diverse these conditions are will be realised when it is pointed out that the industries which have to be catered for are agriculture, almost entirely of the “crofting” type, textiles and dyeing, small mechanical trades and handicrafts, and fishing.