50 



THE AGRICULTURAL NEWS. 



February 19, 1910. 



the most directly useful nature. Not less useful is that 

 which is originated by the internal observations 

 and e.xperience of the department: indeed, such efforts 

 are more than expedient. There is, however, a grave 

 chance that, owing to want of co-operation on the part 

 of the planter, this .self-originated work may bear too 

 great a proportion to the total amount of effort that is 

 expended, with the result that the attitude of those for 

 whom the department exists is likely to become one of 

 apathy rather than sympathy. Thus does the efficiency 

 of the work of the trained investigator depend primarily 

 upon the readiness of the planter to give assistance of 

 a nature that he. alone can supply. 



This lack of helpful suggestion from without is 

 mainly responsible for the over-development of one 

 phase of the duties of an agricultural advisory body; 

 this phase is connected with its function of warning 

 those for whom it exists against the adoption of methods 

 that may result in harm, or against pests and diseases 

 that show signs of being likely to effect damage. It is 

 this which causes the oft-reiterated warnings of such 

 a body almost to develop the quality of mere scares, 

 in the mind of the planter, who gains an instinct to 

 prevent himself from being affected by those very 

 fears which should have been his, as an outcome of his 

 own observations, and the realization of the presence of 

 the enemy within his gates. The existence of such 

 a condition shows that the advisers of the practical 

 agriculturist are doing work of a kind which they 

 should rarely be called upon to effect; they are stimula- 

 ting the planter toward performing his part in the 

 co-operation that should always exist between them 

 and him, in order that he may ask for, and act upon, 

 the advice which they are more than ready to give. 



This attitude of the practical agriculturist is due 

 partly to the fact of his having become accustomed to 

 the presence of the efforts and labours of a department 

 which is continually interesting itself in the current of 

 agricultural affairs. This is not the sole cause, how- 

 ever. A dangerous, wide-spread fallacy exists, to the 

 effect that the work of such an organization can be 

 completed after a few years — that, after it has reduced 

 the number of such pests as are amenable to that 

 process until they are no longer dangerous, or at any 

 rate, has devised means by which they may be kept in 

 check whenever they show a tendency to assume serious 

 proportions, and ^.fter it has laid down similar general 

 rules for all the other branches of agricultural practice, 

 the reasons for its continuation exist no longer, and its 

 disbandment should be a matter of course. A little 

 consideration will show that the very nature of the 

 work that has just been shortly outlined precludes the 



possibility of its final completion, and that there will 

 be always new pest-problems and the periodical occur- 

 rences of old ones, new crops, new methods and new agri- 

 cultural practices which will require the regulating 

 and co-ordinating influence of an advisory department. 



Enough has been said to demonstrate how neces- 

 sary and how valued is co-operation between the practi- 

 cal agriculturist and those whose chief duty is to give 

 him advice and help. The next step is to indicate in 

 what directions.and in what ways, that co-operation can 

 be most usefully conducted. The first matter in regard 

 to which the two may meet on common ground is that 

 of observation. Here, the opportunities of the person 

 whose work is continually performed on the estate are 

 often superior to those of the experimenters whose duty 

 it is to give him every assistance. The recognition, 

 by the former, of such observation as part of his 

 daily activity, and of the expediency of communi- 

 cating its results, as speedily as ma}' be, to those who 

 are working for him, will do much toward increasing 

 the efficiency of that co-operation which is so desirable 



A second indispensable means to the same end 

 must be a readiness on the part of the planter to adopt 

 the measures that are advised in the special circum- 

 stances of the problem that is before him. It may be 

 that these, as at first suggested, are of a preliminary 

 nature, and intended more to indicate what modifi- 

 cations of a general method are required for the partic- 

 ular case which has presented itself, than to have the 

 character of finality. This means that he must be 

 ready to assist in work that is, for a time, of a purely 

 experimental nature. Instances are not wanting, as is 

 well shown by the contents of many of the reports of 

 the Imperial Department of Agriculture, that such work 

 has often been, and is being, readily done, to the benefit 

 of the planter, and for the assistance of his advisers. 

 What is wanted is the extension of this phase of co-oper- 

 ation, so that the benefit may be enlarged and the 

 effectiveness of the work of the Department may be 

 increased. ' 



A third link in the bond of co-operation is the 

 existence of a readiness, on the part of the agriculturist 

 in receipt of advice, to communicate results. It often 

 happens that, when a suggested course of treatment 

 has met with success, the very state of satisfaction that 

 has arisen from this circumstance has been the means 

 of causing the remedy to be forgotten, to the loss both 

 of the planting community and of its advisers. Another 

 matter of omission is that, even where a certain amount 

 of information as to results is given, this is often of 

 a very inadequate nature, in that it merely indi- 

 cates whether a certain course of action has been 



