204 AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION'. 



entire break in their lives from the country to the town which 

 is in no way mitigated that sends many of our best men into 

 the already congested professions, such as law. medicine, etc. 

 In the secondary schools the science taught is at present syste- 

 matic, but it should be taught in a wider sense, as, for instance, 

 with botanists and chemists. The chemist may be the hnest 

 analyst in the world and still be useless as an agricultural 

 chemist, for the simple reason that though he makes the analysis 

 correctly, he cannot interpret the result of his work in such a way 

 as to be of ])ractical value to the farmer. In the same way the 

 botanist may be ecjual to any of his profession in the world, 

 and yet it is within the bounds of |)ossibility that he could not 

 grow a crop equal to that grown by a third-rate farmer. The 

 chemist must be trained as an agricultural chemist if he is to 

 do agricultural work, and the botanist must have other knowledge 

 than that of systematic botany, unless those men who are giving 

 advice to practical farmers wish to bring disapproval upon them- 

 selves and on those following their professions. Science is one 

 thing, knowledge of it another, and tlie application of that know- 

 ledge yet another, and in most cases the last is probal)ly the 

 knowledge that is lacked by many highly-trained scientific men. 



Standard of Educatiox. 



The standard of education which students must have 

 obtained prior to entering an agricultural school or college will 

 and must always be determined by the standard of education in 

 the country at the time. By this I mean that if the seventh 

 standard is the standard on which students would be accepted at 

 an agricultural school, then this is the standard that must have 

 been attained by the greatest number of boys in the country who 

 are likely to become good progressive farmers. Necessarily, 

 if the standard of admittance is lower, the whole standard of 

 the agricultural course must be lowered, as it would be im- 

 possible to teach advanced science to a student who has not had 

 sufficient general education to grasp and assimilate the science 

 expounded to him. Another point to be considered is the in- 

 dividual. Sometimes a sixth standard student will be vastly 

 superior in every way, and make a better farmer than the 

 seventh standard or matriculation man, yet a dividing-line must 

 be drawn somewhere. If a student is admitted to an agricul- 

 tural school or college who has not had sufficient education to 

 assimilate the knowledge taught at the school, then those in 

 charge are. in my opinion, defrauding the parents of their 

 mone\-. the student of his time, and bringing disrepute on tlie 

 institution of which they have charge. The age limit is another 

 question which should be carefully considered. The older the 

 student, within reason, up to. say, 23 years of age, the better, in 

 many ways, as he will have had more experience of life, and 

 will understand more fully what work he intends taking up. and 

 if anv man in the country were given the choice of two men of 



