ioo AN AGRICULTURAL FAGGOT. 



to field experiments, although these are in the nature of 

 things easiest to arrange. Feeding experiments on animals 

 may be also undertaken, as has notably been the case in 

 Norfolk. Experiments or tests carried out in this com- 

 paratively simple way are, like mercy, doubly blest. Not 

 only may the general results be enlightening to those who 

 have never even seen the process by which they are 

 reached, but the act of conducting a trial under specified 

 conditions is in itself educational, even if the final results 

 should turn out to be valueless. 



The educational objects for which co-operation is 

 desirable should strictly, perhaps, be limited to those 

 which are educational to the co-operators. But I am 

 tempted to include under this heading the combination 

 of farmers for the technical education of their labourers. 

 Complaints of the lack of skill among labourers are very 

 prevalent, but it is sometimes forgotten that in the " good 

 old days" inducements, which are often now lacking, were 

 commonly offered to labourers to take an honest pride in 

 their efficiency. Take, for example, the ploughing- 

 matches and the sheep-shearing competitions which a 

 generation or two ago were so popular. Not only did 

 they embellish rural life with a picturesqueness 

 nowadays too often lacking, but they certainly 

 fostered among the labourers a sense of the dignity and 

 importance of operations which demand quite as much 

 intelligence and deftness of hand as many of those carried 

 out by skilled artizans. The late Mr. W. C. Little — 

 whose death deprived British agriculture of one of 

 the most devoted and able men who have ever spent 

 themselves in its service — put this point admirably in 

 that general report on the agricultural labourer to the 

 Royal Commission on Labour, which may be justly 

 described as a classic. He wrote : — 



The general impression respecting the ordinary agricultural 

 labourer is that of a man engaged in work which requires little 

 intelligence, skill, or training, but in reality there are few duties 



