Agricultural Education. 445 



you do.' — ' Make yourself jjerfectly easy on that score, my dear fellow,' was 

 the reply ; * you never will.' — The one was fresh from the schools, and the 

 other had spent all his life in the fields, and yet there was neither mock 

 modesty in the speech of the one, nor arrogance in the answer of the other. 



Mr. did not finish his reply : — ' I have been accustomed,' he might have 



said, ' to be amongst plants and animals, constantly riding and walking on the 

 soil which supports them both, since I was a child. Ever since I can remember 

 I have had to do with the tillage of the land, the cultivation of crops, the 

 management of live stock. There is not an aspect of weather, land, or life, so 

 far as the live stock of the farm are concerned, which I have not habitually 

 witnessed, realised, and studied. That of Avhich instances and striking cases 

 may be observed by you is foreseen or recognised by me in its first be- 

 ginnings almost as if by instinct. Long familiarity witli the details of xaj 

 occupation, beginning, too, with the mind of a child which has hardly any 

 other impression on it to weaken the sensitiveness with which its early know- 

 ledge is received, gives me, almost unconsciously, and without the effort of any 

 special attention such as you must exercise, those intimations of fitness or of 

 unfitness, of quality and condition, whether of soil, or crop, or animal, on 



"which the right direction of our business of course depends.' Mr. was 



perfectly correct ; it is an immense advantage to an agriculturist, as to the 

 follower of any other occupation, to learn that occupation young." 



' Take now the recently declared opinions on this subject of living 

 men. One of the most intelligent and successful farmers in the 

 West of England tells me : 



" I left school myself before 1 was fourteen, and went at once to assist in 

 eveiy operation that might be going on, taking the milking-pail morning and 

 evening, seeing the cattle foddered properly, and lending a helping hand. I 

 have never found a boy in the way after leaving school, and should quite 

 despair of his making a man of business unless he had to mix with everything 

 that moved before he was sixteen or seventeen." 



A North Lincolnshire correspondent, with forty years' experience 

 of the life of a tenant-farmer, who is well known and respected in his 

 county, says : — 



" I attribute my success, imdcr the good providence of God, in the first 

 place, to getting to know the practical part of farming in my youth, and fol- 

 lowing that up with tolerably industrious habits." 



A leading Norfolk farmer says : — 



" I have not been unsuccessful, but I attribute that success in a great 

 measure to the thorough practical knowledge obtained during apprenticeship." 



An experienced Kentish farmer writes : — ■ 



" My experience confirms the opinion that boys who begin early to learn the 

 practical part of farming, have great advantages over those even who are 

 sixteen or seventeen before they leave school." 



He adds : — ■ 



" I invariably answer [requests for advice about the education of a boy who 

 is to be a farmer] by saying: — Send the lad as near as you can to the place you 

 think he is likely to settle in as a farmer — select the man who has the character of 

 being the best farmer in his locality; and, if you can find such a thing as a 

 money-making farmer in the present day, get him to take him and treat him as 

 one of his family." 



