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THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



with him, and he judges from henceforth more coolly, 

 and with a more certain and practised glance. His 

 conclusions are not always the most clear, and allowance 

 must be made, for we see that he sincerely searches after 

 truth. He appears to me, however, to have perfectly 

 described the true nature of professional instruction in 

 the following, which I copy verbatim from page 338 : 

 " It is beyond dispute that in all professions, practice 

 alone forms good practitioners. In the best organized 

 schools — medical, agricultural, or otherwise — we learn 

 Utile excepi to learn ; that is to say, the knowledge 

 acquired disposes to observation, forms the judgment, 

 and enables the intelligent pupil to classify the facts, to 

 analyze them, and to deduce the consequences with 

 greater correctness. To demand more or better of pro- 

 fessional schools is to ask for the impossible ; and the 

 best of them— those which produced the most useful 

 results— are those which have the good sense to comprise 

 in the study of the sciences the greatest number of 

 generalities, and compelling the students to examine into 

 them as much as possible." 



These excellent words embrace, in my opinion, all the best 

 arguments on this delicate subject. Agricultural instruction 

 should still less pretend to form good cultivators or skilful 

 proprietors, than men qualified to become such. This is not 

 the case with all — very far from it ; but it ig open to all. 

 Nothing can be substituted, either in agriculture or the arts, 

 of application for real practice, that which is exercised at our 

 own risks and perils, and of which we ought to face all the 

 difiSculties and bear all the consequences. But we ought to 

 be more or less prepared for this formidable trial, and it is 

 the task of instruction to prepare us for it. At once insuffi- 

 cient and necessary, it cannot do more, and it ought not to do 

 less ; and the best system to effect it consists less in pre- 

 occupyhig ourselves too soon about the immediate application, 

 than, as Royer has well said : " in entering tipon the study of 

 the most general sciences, and examinin<j into them as much as 

 poisible.'" It is always the question of Voltaire, between the 

 adjective and substantive. In all science applicable the sub- 

 stantive is the science, the adjective is the application. 



This definition of professional instruction is applicable 

 especially to that which constituted the mission of Royer, 

 as regards its principal object — the higher branches of 

 instruction. The Government had already provided for 

 the diffusion of practical teaching by the institution 

 of farming-schools, and it was engaged in taking 

 one more step, and found for the higher classes the 

 superior school of agricultural sciences. Those who by 

 birth v/ere destined to become hereafter the principal pro- 

 prietors of the soil, as well as those who by their talents 

 and tastes looked forward to becoming administrators of 

 large estates or agricultural engineers, could take no part, in 

 a country where all instruction was furnished at the ex- 

 pense of the state, like the Chinese and Japanese, in a 

 course of study appropriated to the most useful professions. 

 This inconceivable hiatus could not long exist. Royer in- 

 sisted urgently, in reference to Saxony, on the social and 

 political, as well as the agricultural utility, of a numerous 

 class of proprietors cultivating their own domains, 

 and habituating themselves from their childhood in finding 

 pleasure and profit m it. "The study of the physical and 

 natural sciences occupy in Saxony," said he, " a large place 

 in the life of men of leisure. An acquaintance with these 

 creates in them a great taste for rural life. In their estima. 



tion man is no longer isolated, nature no longer dumb: 

 minerals, vegetables, and animals, all become a perpetually 

 varied subject of observation and study." This manage- 

 ment of the superior classes exercises a happy and powerful 

 influence over the rest of the nation. Comfort, intelligence, 

 and politeness are more than anywhere else diffused 

 throughout all ranks of the rural population. 



On his return from this journey, so well executed, Royer 

 received the cross of the Legion of Honour, and would 

 doubtless have pursued his career with increasing renown, if 

 a jealous destiny had not come to arrest him in the midst of 

 his labours. He died on the 25th June, 1847, at the in- 

 stant in which his last volume was published. Some 

 months after, the Government, which had charged itself 

 with these various studies, disappeared itself before a revo- 

 lution ; but the project which it had elaborated survived it. 

 The new Government resumed with warmth that of agri- 

 cultural instruction ; and under the auspices of an excel- 

 lent man, whose recent loss we have to deplore, M. Tourrit, 

 the law of the 3rd October, 1848, was passed, and the 

 National Agricultural Institute of Versailles was estab- 

 lished. It was one of the most cherished projects of 

 Roj'er, and received its realization ; but he was no longer 

 there to take part in it. In his personal absence, his book 

 was put largely in requisition for the new organization. 

 Must we congratulate or pity him ? If he has not had the 

 happiness of seeing created in France superior agricultural 

 education on the principles he had laid down, neither had 

 he til e mortification of seeing it suppressed four years after 

 when the French successor of ThacJr and Schwez, M. de 

 Gasparin, had accepted the superintendence of it. 



Fortunately, gentlemen, the art that we cultivate is a 

 great school of patience. When the ploughman trusts the 

 seed to the soil which he has prepared for it, he knows 

 beforehand hov/ many enemies threaten it, and may wrest 

 from him in a day the fruit of his labour. The frost, 

 drought, moisture, hail, wind, birds, insects, parasitic 

 plants, a thousand dangers at once, attend the precious 

 germ, from the houi* which precedes its springing, to that 

 which follows its maturity. The husbandman knows this> 

 and is not discouraged. When he is striken by one of these 

 scourges, he begins again, certain that sooner or later God 

 wiil bless his labour. It is even so with useful inventions ; 

 their lot is frequently to succumb, but they raise them- 

 selves by their own forces, and always end by making their 

 way. Leonce de Lavergne, 



Member of the Institute, and of the 

 Central Society of Agriculture. 



PROLIFIC BARLEY AND WHEAT. 



TO THE EDITOR OF THE MARK-LANE EXPRESS. 



Sir,— I see in your last week's publication that Mr, John 

 Steed has favoured you with a sample of what he calls his 

 new barley. If it is really a new kind as represented, it is 

 an acquisition, and I am delighted he has produced such as 

 J cannot, and what supersedes any I ever heard of. I have 

 two prolific varieties (not new), winter and spring, which I 

 cannot but think arc as prolific as any extant. I enclose you 

 produce of one ear of each. The winter variety was sown in 

 September, on the Lois-Weedon plan, viz;, on only one 

 moiety of the land, and some of it I sowed in spring, and 



