42 



lines, and he owes much to the example and enterprise 

 of the European planter, as well as to the assistance of 

 the Government. 



With this material progress has come, somewhat 

 slowly, the recognition of the fact that tropical agricul- 

 ture is an applied science, and the reflection that pro- 

 gress would have been more rapid and less costly had 

 it been effected more generally under that enlightened 

 direction which depends on the considered application 

 of scientific principles. 



Agriculture in Europe is now thoroughly alive to 

 these important considerations, and agricultural educa- 

 tion is everywhere regarded as an essential preliminary 

 to agricultural practice. Tropical agriculture has, 

 however, only just reached this position, and its pro- 

 gress so far has been in the main effected by men who 

 have had to learn at their own cost, or at the cost of 

 their employers, the intricacies of a subject in which 

 only accumulated experience and native shrewdness 

 were available as guides. The partial successes of 

 the past afford, however, no reason for delaying an 

 advance which has been made in all other pro- 

 fessions, in which a system of technical education 

 has replaced one of apprenticeship. The apprenticed 

 apothecary of the past was successful in his own time, 

 but he is now replaced by the scientifically educated and 

 technically trained physician and surgeon, and no one 

 would dream of reverting to a system of apprenticeship 

 in place of the thoroughly equipped medical schools of 

 to-day. The European farmer and employer of agricul- 

 tural labour is now usually an educated man who has 

 passed through the curriculum of one of the many 

 efficient agricultural colleges which exist in this country 

 and, indeed, throughout Europe. 



The time has come to consider how education in 

 tropical agriculture can best be provided. The open- 

 ing up of new countries such as East, West, and 

 Central Africa by European enterprise in agriculture 

 has greatly increased the demand for men who are 

 properly qualified to undertake such pioneer work. At 

 present the means of learning the essentials of tropical 

 agriculture usually consist in undergoing, with or 

 without previous knowledge of temperate agriculture, a 



