56 RUKAL RECONSTRUCTION 



Royal Agricultural Society of Denmark in I860, to give advice on 

 the introduction of rational methods for making butter and cheese. 

 It will be gathered from this that dairy development engaged the 

 close attention of the leaders of Danish agriculture already before 

 Prince Bismarck brought down his sledge hammer blow on the 

 smaller country in 1864, compelling Danes in self-defence to give 

 a new direction to their agriculture. Like " Father Thaer " — who 

 was our George III.'s physician in ordinary in Hanover — this 

 pioneer konsulent, one Segelcke, proceeded quickly from private 

 teaching to the organisation of a school specifically for young men 

 laying themselves out for dairy farming, and also for dairy maids — 

 which school proved exceedingly useful when, under German 

 pressure, the great change came to be made in 1864, corn-growing 

 Denmark being turned at once into a specifically milk-producing 

 country. His ministrations were indeed found so valuable that 

 groups of farmers combined, here and there, to appoint their own 

 private dairy konsulenten. In 1875 the Royal Agiicultural Society 

 proceeded further, appointing a konsulent also specifically for live 

 stock rearing. In 1877 it followed up such step by the nomination 

 of other konsulenten for plant cultivation. So the movement 

 developed. In 1887 the Government took the matter partly in 

 hand, with money to go towards the maintenance of konsulenten 

 by that time appointed, whose number had a year ago increased 

 to seventy, namely, forty for live stock, twenty for plant cultiva- 

 tion and ten indiscriminately for both. An additional konsulent 

 for poultry rearing has since been added in the course of the past 

 year. 



From Denmark the system spread into Belgium and Holland — 

 later also into France, and last of all, to be there taken up with the 

 greatest vigour and extension, into the United States, and in their 

 wake into Canada, where practically every county now has its own 

 " county agent " or " agricultural " or " county representative," 

 and some counties have two, with assistants to support them. 



One remarkable feature deserving of notice about this movement 

 accordingly is. that it is just the countries which are particularly 

 strong in agricultural education of the ordinary sort — by means of 

 farm schools, agricultural colleges, and the like, supplemented by 

 high schools, or else by carefully encouraged agricultural associa- 

 tions, taking their role as educational bodies seriously — such as 

 the Low Countries and Denmark — which first took up this practice 

 of additional, individualised button-holing and, so to call it, face-to- 

 face teaching, which shows to what extent the " appetite " for 



