president's address SECTION G. 157 



grounds, they will be led to plant and beautify the grounds about 

 their homes. In this way the information and advantages gained 

 will be likely to have a permanent effect." Succeeding generations 

 of school children will have reason to bless the Minister who 

 instituted Arbor Day in New South Wales. 



I believe that the liberal and progressive gentlemen who guide 

 the destinies of our Department of Public Instruction will, in the 

 course of time, make the teaching in our agricultural districts as 

 practical and valuable for the children concerned as the general 

 teaching is for our city schools. In due course the schools in 

 farming districts Avill have special reading books dealing with the 

 many interesting subjects connected with agi'iculture, specially 

 written and illustrated to suit the conditions of Australian farming. 

 They will have maps, pictures, and illustrations representing the 

 plants, insects, and domestic animals of the respective districts. 

 They will have object lessons given by intelligent and enthusiastic 

 teachers, all having a distinct agricultural bias, and in a limited 

 number of cases little gardens and plots worked by the children 

 themselves under the teachers' supervision. 



And here, when we begin to talk of teaching practical agriculture 

 to our rising generation, it may seem jjroper to inquire what agri- 

 culture is, whether a science, an art, or a business — each and all of 

 which it is called in these days. 



If it were merely a science it could be taught at school or college 

 as is done in Germany, with a small experimental farm as a 

 laboratory, in the same way as chemistry is taught. I am strongly 

 of the opinion that agriculture, as suited to the conditions of this 

 country, can never be taught in such a way. Though agriculture 

 may not be strictly defined as a science, I should rather be inclined 

 to call it the application of several sciences to one particular 

 purpose — the cultivation of the soil. 



It is an art, inasmuch as it needs a workshop, that is, a farm, for 

 the exercise of the pupils ; and it is a business, as it needs a regular 

 system of apprenticeship to learn the many operations of commercial 

 life necessary on a well-managed farm. 



Mr. J. C. Morton, in a lecture before the Royal Agricultural 

 Society of England, made the following pertinent remarks : — 

 " Agriculture is an art or manufacture. It is also a business or 

 trade ; and people have of late years got into the habit of calling 

 it a science. By this last designation it can, of course, be meant 

 only that the facts which make up the experience of the farmer — 

 like those, indeed, of any experience whatsoever — are recognised by 

 many scientists as in perfect keejjing with the laws of nature. 

 Agriculture, though not a science, has thus at length become a 

 museum, as it were, of facts and instances and specimens, in the 

 classification of which students of all sciences have been successfully 

 at work, so that every part has now the right upon it of a well- 

 defined relationship with scientific truth. If this be a correct 



