AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION IN BELGIUM. 427 



Crown, and the oversight of agriculture in the various Provinces was 

 placed under the control of these supervisors. Their specific duties 

 and methods of operation are explained in the discussion that follows, 

 and are suggestive of methods that might be put into operation in 

 improving agriculture in the United States. 



EXTENSION SUPERVISOES. 



The office of extension supervisors was created by royal edict the 

 2C)th of September, 1S85. The supervisors have for their principal 

 mission the popularization in a practical manner of the knowledge 

 and processes of agricultural science. They put themselves in direct 

 contact Avith the cultivators and give them gratuitously the counsel 

 desired. They perform the functions of nomadic (peripatetic or 

 itinerant) agricultural lecturers in their territory and organize an- 

 nual conferences in at least five districts throughout each section, in 

 order to hold a complete course on some one or other branch of the 

 science or the practice of agriculture applicable to the region. The 

 supervisors are further charged with organizing demonstration or 

 experiment fields in order to give practical instruction to the farmers. 



The fields of operation of the extension supervisors were distrib- 

 uted according to agricultural regions, the entire country being 

 divided into six such divisions, three of them being covered by two 

 supervisors each and the other three having one supervisor each. 



The chief extension supervisors were appointed by royal edict the 

 26th of September, 1885, and after installation by the minister of 

 agriculture they entered upon their duties on the 15th of October, 

 1885. 



Under the direction of M. Carluyvels, inspector general of agricul- 

 ture, and M. Proost, director general of the rural office, the new 

 serA-ice was not long in attaining the highest results. 



In 1894, experience having demonstrated that it would be advisable 

 to make the fields of operation of the extension supervisors corre- 

 spond to the administrative division of the country, a ministerial 

 decree was issued providing that each of the governmental Provinces 

 should be served by an official agriculturist with one or more deputies, 

 the deputy agriculturists to be specially charged with serving, under 

 the direction and responsibility of the provincial agriculturist, a 

 group of agricultural assemblies (civil divisions). The deputy as- 

 sistant agriculturists fulfill, then, the same functions as the provin- 

 cial agriculturists. In 1897 the administration decided to place them 

 on an equality with the provincial agriculturists as regards their title 

 and their relation with the central administration and with the 

 public. 



The royal edict of the 25th of October, 1897, countersigned by the 

 minister of agriculture, provides that the corps of extension super- 



