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system of apprenticeship, in which all the difficulties 

 and disadvantages of this antiquated system of learn- 

 ing are apparent. In what is now known as the 

 Middle East, in India, Ceylon and Malaya, the 

 young man new to the tropics, usually without any 

 agricultural experience, is apprenticed as a " creeper " 

 and learns the ordinary procedure of the estate whilst 

 entrusted with more or less responsible duties of 

 management and supervision. Many of the larger 

 planting companies are beginning to recognize the in- 

 adequacy of this plan of providing for the supreme 

 management of estates on which from time to time arise 

 problems which no amount of accumulated experience 

 and judgment are competent alone to resolve. As a 

 result, men are now beginning to be selected as 

 assistants who have previously passed through the 

 course of an agricultural college at home, and who 

 have only to learn the special methods and problems of 

 tropical agriculture during their career as apprentices. 

 This step in selecting partially educated men is a signi- 

 ficant and satisfactory advance in the right direction. 

 The men thus selected have received a training in those 

 sciences, such as chemistry and botany, on which the 

 practice of tropical, as of temperate, agriculture depends. 

 They have also gained some knowledge of general 

 agricultural procedure and of estate management, all of 

 which is of distinct value. They are, however, wholly 

 unacquainted with tropical conditions and problems, 

 and know nothing of the existing practice as regards 

 the cultivation of tropical crops, whilst they are wholly 

 ignorant of even the principles of the management of 

 native labour, and of the routine to be followed in the 

 growth of tea, rubber, coffee and cocoa and tropical 

 foodstuffs. The problems and difficulties which con- 

 front them in these subjects are beyond their previous 

 experience and training. 



It has to be recognized that it is necessary before a 

 man, even with a diploma in European agriculture, can 

 take an effective part in the management of a tropical 

 agricultural estate, or play any important part in im- 

 proving agricultural methods and solving special 

 problems, or in teaching agriculture to natives, to have 

 been well trained and thoroughly well informed as to 



