Advancement of Agricultural Science. 367 



the profits of the farm to make up for losses entailed by the school, 

 the salaries were too low to attract to the spot efficient teachers, 

 and at the same time the terms of admission exceeded the means 

 of the generality of students. 



Under these circumstances, it is much to the credit of the 

 director, that he should have dissuaded the Company from accept- 

 ing an offer of direct pecuniary aid which had been tendered to 

 them by the government, feeling, as he says, that the establish- 

 ment would be discredited in the -eyes of the neighbouring culti- 

 vators, as an example farm, if a part of the funds that maintained 

 it were known to be derived from extraneous sources. But the 

 same objection did not apply to the proposal subsequently made 

 to them, that the payment of the professors should be at the 

 charge of government — an arrangement which enabled the institu- 

 tion to obtain a higher grade of instructors, and likewise to lower 

 the terms of admission from 1500 to 1200 francs for the higher, 

 and from 1300 to 850 for the lower class of students; a sum 

 equal to 48/. sterling for the former, and 36Z. for the latter. 



The present position of the Agricultural Institute at Grignon, 

 and the views of its promoters, may therefore be summed up in 

 the following words of the director, M. Bella, which are extracted 

 from one of his published reports : — 



" Instruction in husbandry may truly be said not to partake of 

 the nature of those branches of education which admit of being 

 pursued in the interior of large cities : it is at once so vast and 

 so complicated, and it stands so much in need of an union of 

 theory with practice, that the Chairs created in towns, though they 

 may spread a taste for agriculture, cannot in themselves form 

 expert husbandmen. 



" If governments were to feel themselves called upon to carry 

 on a system of farming operations in all its several departments, 

 in order to test the soundness of theories by the results of prac- 

 tice, many difficulties would occur in the execution of their task, 

 and a much more lavish expenditure must, if we may trust to 

 general belief, be incurred, than would happen if the same were 

 in the hands of individuals. It is more prudent, therefore, on 

 the part of the state, that it should associate itself with some 

 scheme already in the hands of individuals, and even here its 

 intervention would be prejudicial, if its co-operation were prof- 

 fered to establishments which did not present in themselves suffi- 

 cient guarantees, and if the assistance it afforded were not to be 

 confined within proper limits. 



'' Thus it would plainly be a fault for it to mix itself up with any 

 scheme, which did not possess the conditions of duration necessary 

 for the accomplishment of its proposed office ; or which had not 

 been proved to contain within itself the elements at least of sue- 



