TEACHING THE CULTIVATORS 47 



not fashionable — as it is in some other countries. Those who make 

 a point of belonging to the " upper ten " will not, as a university 

 study, recognise agriculture as a re'xnj eAeufc'pios, a " liberal 

 profession." They are very ready to betoken an interest in it, and 

 to prosper on its returns. But call themselves students of agri- 

 culture they will not. The ordinary professional farmer has some- 

 thing like a contempt for " book learning." He will not even open 

 his eyes to see the lessons — conveyed in characters familiar to him 

 in " demonstrations " — which are, both in Canada and in the United 

 States, found to be, and are used as, one of the most effective means, 

 and most trustworthy and readily accepted methods of teaching. 

 How many of those farmers go to Woburn or to Rothamsted ? Well, 

 those are rather experimental than demonstrational stations. But 

 in Sussex we had — I mean the Sussex Association for the Improve- 

 ment of Agriculture — half a dozen mainly demonstrational stations 

 scattered over the county, so as to make one or other of them readily 

 accessible to any one. We got a few farmers to come and see one 

 or the other at our annual festive gatherings by invitation. But I 

 doubt if they carried very much instruction away with them. They 

 certainly did not supply any proof of having done so. 



In the elementary grade things are not much better. Boys learn 

 something. Now there are institutions for girls also. But the 

 matter is carried very little forward. School days over, teaching 

 becomes scanty, and lessons learnt are likely to be forgotten. 



In a word — in the simile just impressed — the water is there ; but 

 the horse will not drink. 



How can we make him ? 



When you have a stubborn, restive horse to deal with, which will 

 not budge when in front of its waggon, it is not a bad plan to couple 

 a pair of bullocks in front of it, to the pole, and make them drag the 

 waggon along, with their gentle but steady pull, which, against its 

 will, carries the refractory horse along with it and makes it go — after 

 which it desists from its restiveness as ineffective. 



Now, to make our farming horse go on, we have several kinds of 

 powerful bullocks fully ready for our use. 



One such pair of bullocks, suitable for the farmer's case, and very 

 effective, is, as observed in the preceding chapter, the children of the 

 restive old folk who will not learn. We have not at all made use of 

 this effective factor in education, the remarkably beneficial effects 

 derived from which in the United States and in Canada have 

 already been adverted to. This method has proved exceedingly 

 effective there, and is accordingly being more and more pressed into 



