162 president's address — section g. 



the farm. All the teaching of such a college will have hut one 

 purpose in view — everything about the place, from the student's 

 leggings and moleskin trousers up to the science lectures and 

 demonstrations, will have an agricultural tone and bias. 



In Germany the High School of Agriculture, corresponding 

 with our college, is of a purely theoretical character, and the pro- 

 fessors themselves admit that residence in a city like Berlin, and 

 teaching theory alone, tend rather to give the students a distaste 

 for the country life which they are afterwards supposed to follow, 

 and the result is that but a small percentage of the students on 

 leaving this high school go to actual farm work. In France, on 

 the other hand, their National Agricultural Institute provides for 

 practical work as well as theoretical teaching To show how 

 thoroughly equipped this college is, and how it is valued by the 

 French people, I may mention that the annual cost to the State of 

 this one institution alone is over £10,000, a sum which is never 

 grudged, because the people are aware that from this college there 

 are being turned out their best farmers, their most progressive 

 landlords, and their most viseful professors of agriculture. 



I liave heard two very different opinions expressed about the 

 way in which the farms connected with our agricultural schools 

 and colleges should be managed. One party asserts that the farms 

 should pay commercially in much the same way as a private farm 

 is made to do. The gentlemen who talk like this lose sight of the 

 fact that a large amount to be done on the college farms must be 

 of an educational nature. The experiments to be carried out must 

 often be undertaken with a full knowledge that they will fail in a 

 pecuniary sense, but will on that account be none the less valuable 

 and instructive to the hundreds of farmers who will by their means 

 be enabled to avoid similar costly experiments. This educational 

 work can never be made to show a balance on the right side of the 

 ledger in £ s. d., but who can estimate the value to the whole 

 farming community of a series of such experiments properly con- 

 ducted ? On the other hand, some persons assert that the com- 

 mercial aspect of the question need never be considered ; that the 

 whole object of the farm in connection with the college should be 

 instruction of the best possible kind. 



Now I cannot help feeling that no farm teaching can be pro- 

 perly successful imless it be taught on commercial lines, and that 

 our students should not be taught amateur farming and experi- 

 mental plot cultivation without at the same time seeing constantly 

 before them a certain area of land farmed and managed on strictly 

 commercial principles. I hope therefore that at each of our ex- 

 perimental farm schools and colleges there will be a certain area, 

 sufficient to constitute a farm of medium size, set apart for farming 

 operations suitable to the district, which will be carried on with a 

 strict view to profit. The expenses of such a farm should be 

 amply met by the returns from it, and there should be a small 



