president's address— section g. 161 



no scheme of agricultural education in any of the coimtries of the 

 Old World that we can copy in its entirety. There is no graduation 

 from the schools to the colleges, and from the colleges to the 

 university classes. There is no supervision exercised over the 

 different grades of education to harmonise their teachings, and to 

 bring them into correspondence with one another. 



In this young country we have still an ojDportunity of making 

 our system of agricultural education correspond with our national 

 scheme of general instruction, having the university as its culmi- 

 nating point, i would therefore propose to offer special induce- 

 ments for students from our farm schools to go on to our college, 

 which is at present our Agricultural University. I should like to 

 see scholarships given from each of the farm schools, to enable the 

 holders to proceed to the college for a fm-ther period of two years. 

 At the college, which has now been started two years, we have 

 two classes of students — seniors and juniors, one of which is at 

 work each day on the farm, the other being engaged in the class- 

 room or the laboratory. On the farm every practical operation — 

 from fencing, cutting drains, working at the saw bench, making 

 gates, erection of farm buildings, blacksmithing, harness-mending, 

 pruning vines and fruit trees, budding, grafting, making a stack of 

 ensilage, butter-making and cheese-making ; each of these opera- 

 tions is done by the students in turn, so that each maybe supposed, 

 at the end of his course, to have had the same manual training as 

 he would have had on the best-managed general farm. 



In the class-room he goes through an advanced course of botany, 

 with special reference to all plants of economic value ; of ento- 

 mology, by which to learn enough about insect life to enable him 

 to distinguish between friends or foes, and in after life to devise 

 means himself for dealing with the numerous insect pests with 

 which his crops may be afflicted. He w'ill learn sufficient geology 

 to enable him to vmderstand the composition of rocks — how they 

 have been formed, and how they in turn form soils. 



From his chemistry he will learn the composition of the soils he 

 has to deal wiih, of the manures he has to employ, and of the crops 

 he may grow ; he will learn how to adapt one to the other, and 

 supply the deficiencies in the soil in the most effective manner and 

 at the least possible cost ; he will learn to discern what changes 

 take place through fermentation, and how this great agency can be 

 controlled and utilised ; he will learn sufficient veterinary science 

 and practice to enable him to deal with the diseases of his oAvn 

 stock, and be a valuable help to his neighbors ; he will learn a 

 system of book-keeping that can be adapted to a farmer's require- 

 ments — a branch of education as much needed by the farmer as by 

 any other man of business, and yet strangely neglected by them as 

 a class. He will learn the scientific principles underlying every 

 agricultural operation, and will be taught the reason for every 

 such operation, however small, which he is daily performing on 



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