NOTES. 697 



A new seed farm has also been opened at Yedashe in charge of the district 

 agriculturist of the Toungoo district. 



School of Tropical Agriculture in Ceylon. — According M Tropical Life, the 

 new School of Tropical Agriculture at Peradeniya, Ceylon, was opened to 

 students on January 8. R. N. Lyne, the director of agi'iculture, is principal and 

 C. Drieberg, vice-principal. 



Applicants for admission must be 17 years of age and have passed the eighth 

 grade or its equivalent. Each student is required to cultivate a plat, growing 

 thereon various economic products for which credit will be given toward a 

 school certificate. The course, which extends through one year of three terms, 

 includes the following subjects : Soils, fertilizers, the plant, chemistry, economic 

 products, agricultural engineering, the animal, and crop pests and plant diseases. 

 The mornings will be devoted to practical instruction in the botanic gardens 

 and experiment station. 



The school is intended primarily for the training of teachers in the vernacular 

 schools with the view eventually of making agriculture a compulsory subject in 

 the code. Instruction in English will also be given for the sons of landowners 

 and others who intend to take up plantation work as a career. 



Sectional Conferences on Secondary Agricultural Instruction. — A series of 

 sectional conferences of those interested in the preparation of teachers of 

 secondary school agi'iculture is being held from time to time. The first of 

 these conferences was at Columbus, Ohio, February 22, 1915, to consider the 

 general problem of training teachers of agi'iculture for the secondary schools 

 of the North Atlantic States. 



On April 26, 1915, a similar conference was held at Chattanooga, Tenn., for 

 the Southern States, and a second conference for the North Atlantic States 

 October 22 and 23, 1915, at New York City. 



The first conference for the North Central States was held at Purdue Uni- 

 versity, February 19, 1916. About nine States were represented, with an 

 attendance aggregating about 45 and composed mainly of professors of agri- 

 cultural education in the land-grant colleges and supervisors of secondary 

 agricultural instruction in state departments of public instruction. The meet- 

 ing was opened with an address by President W. E. Stone on Teacher-training 

 for Secondary Agricultural Education. The presiding officer was C. H. Lane, 

 of the States Relations Service of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, who 

 declared that it was the purpose of the conference to formulate a tentative 

 four-year course of study to be offered at land-grant colleges and other insti- 

 tutions which will fit men to teach agriculture in the secondary schools of this 

 section. A suggestive course in agriculture for normal schools and colleges 

 in Indiana which give teacher-training courses was used as a basis for dis- 

 cussion. 



The conference went on record as favoring from 140 to 144 semester hours 

 as a requirement for p-aduation, and from 15 to 18 hours as approximately 

 the amount of time which should be given to professional work including 

 practice teaching. It favored 40 per cent of technical work in agriculture as 

 a minimum in the four-year course, with 12 semester hours of English, includ- 

 ing public speaking, and believed that mathematics as now given in most of 

 the land-grant colleges and modern languages should not be required. 



A report from a committee on institutional relations was adopted, which 

 recommended that the land-gi-ant colleges cooperate with other colleges and 

 normal schools in their respective States in formulating courses for training 

 teachers of agriculture with a view to the standardizing of courses. The object 

 sought was an interchange of credits to minimize the loss of time on the part 

 of students who may shift from the normal school to the land-grant college. 



