190 EDUCATION 



endowment of a professorial cliair at Edinburgh ; private 

 enterprise provides Cirencester, Downton, and Aspatria ; 

 agricultural societies offer examinations and prizes; and 

 farming is taught in some of the country schools. Scot- 

 land, as usual, leads the van of education. Edinburgh 

 University has recently formulated an exhaustive scheme 

 for examinations in agricultural science. The examina- 

 tions established by the Surveyors' Institute for land agents 

 attract an increasing number of candidates. Night 

 schools for teaching scientific agriculture have been at 

 work for three years with considerable success in Aberdeen- 

 shire and Forfarshire. But, if the country is on the eve 

 of an agricultural revolution so great as the creation of a 

 peasant proprietary, or even the multiplication of small 

 holdings, something more is required than isolated efforts. 

 A glance at the means provided in some of the principal 

 European states may bring home to us our relative 

 deficiencies, and urge the country to inaugurate a new 

 departure. 



A sketch has already been given of the French system. 

 France has an organised system of education which works 

 with great efficiency, and to which it annually devotes 

 70,000Z, It is designed to encourage men of science to 

 experiment in chemistry and machinery, to afford practical 

 as well as theoretical instruction to landed proprietors, 

 agents, and farmers, to train up intelligent peasant pro- 

 prietors and labourers. For these objects there are four 

 grades of schools. In most of the departments model 

 farms, or fermes exemplaires, are established for farm 

 labourers ; provincial schools are carried on for bailiffs 



be founded at Melbourne, and a new farm school is to be established at 

 Longerenong. It is expected that the existing farm school at Dookie 

 will show a profit for 1887. 



