president's address — SECTION G. 145 



We have had a sj'stem of education admirably adapted for the 

 hoys intended for city life, hut which had till three years ago little 

 agricultural flavor in it to recommend it to those who are to go on 

 the land. 



We have a very complete system of general education, leading 

 from our public primary schools throusjh our superior public 

 schools, our high schools, and our grammar schools, to the uni- 

 versity with its complete courses in arts, medicine, law, science, 

 engineering, and philosophy ; but, until two years ago, the only 

 systematic instruction in agriculture was through the agency of 

 the night classes at the Technical College, where Mr. Angus 

 Mackay has done very useful pioneering work. For years this 

 gentleman had to act as agricultural chemist, pathologist, ento- 

 mologist, botanist, and general agricultural expert for the whole 

 colony, and did much, single-handed, to arouse interest in the 

 subject and to stimulate a spirit of inquiry. 



The general body of our farmers in New South Wales are men 

 who have had no previous experience in agriculture, but have gone 

 on the land through pressure of circumstances. Their own brave 

 hearts and strong arms have enabled them, with a rich virgin soil, 

 to achieve good results while prices were high and as long as the 

 soil retained its fertility and pests and diseases caused little trouble. 



Things have been generally prosperous till a few years ago, 

 when problems began to present themselves which the merely 

 practical man could not solve after any amount of theorising and 

 vain imaginings. The wheat farmers became concerned about the 

 periodic visitations of rust, and though some of the more advanced 

 thinkers were quite certain that it was only "a hinsect," this 

 happy inspiration did not bring with it any suggestions as to 

 remedial or preventive measures. Phylloxera seriously menaced 

 our vine-growing industry, and we suddenly found that, with all 

 our accumulated wisdom, we knew nothing about this little insect's 

 life history, and our ignorance led us to work out our own salvation 

 in a very clumsy and expensive manner. 



Our orchardists began to find the codlin moth a serious trouble, 

 and though this beautiful little moth had been with us for fifty- 

 three years, it had been nobody's business to cultivate friendly rela- 

 tions with her, nor to prosecute her with ai'senical sprays and crafty 

 bandage traps, so that many of our oldest orchards became useless 

 to their owners and breeding grounds to infest the whole colony. 



Aspidiotus aurantii was playing havoc with our old orange 

 orchards ; Schizoneura lanigera and Mytilaspis pomorum were re- 

 ducing our apple-growers to despair ; and yet the man who blamed 

 protection for it all was as successful in stopping the ravages of 

 these insects as the man who thought that vmtaxed bananas from 

 Fiji were ruining the fruit industry. Simply because the one was 

 as ignorant of the true cause of the mischief as the other, and it 

 was easier to blame politics than to deal with the scales. 



K 



