our unfamiliarity with the language , in which it was read, I 

 am sure you will wish to express your great admiration o 

 the activity of Dr. Gioli and his colleagues. His countrymen 

 have not been very long 'engaged in colonial work, and they 

 certainly have the advantage of our experience as well as our 

 mistakes to guide them. They also have the advantage of a 

 climate at home which 'enables them to do a great deal more 

 in the way of preliminary work than we could possibly attempt 

 in this country. All of you will join me, I know, in wishing 

 great prosperity to the efforts which Italy is now making to 

 establish agriculture successfully in her new African posses- 

 sions. Lastly, we have heard Mr. Hamel Smith's exceedingly 

 interesting and, I think, weighty plea for the establishment of 

 an agricultural college in the Western Hemisphere, for which 

 he adduces evidence not merely based upon the importance of 

 such a college to the West Indian Islands, but g'oes further, 

 and points to the importance of establishing it as a means 

 of training the numerous young men who go out to Latin- 

 America to engage in agricultural pursuits. 



Mr. R. N. LYNE (Director, Department of Agriculture, 

 Ceylon) : Mr. President and Gentlemen I have listened with 

 very great interest to the papers which have been read here 

 to-day, and more especially to what our President said in his 

 opening address this morning, when he appeared to me to 

 place the general outlines of ^the question of education in 

 tropical agriculture in its true perspective. We are doing 

 something in Ceylon in the matter of education in tropical 

 agriculture, and we are approaching it from three points of 

 view. In the first place we have to consider the training of 

 the peasantry. This can only be done by educating the 

 children in the schools. It is no use, in my opinion, ever 

 attempting to alter the methods of the adult goiya, as we call 

 him in Ceylon. The education of the children in the schools 

 can only >be effected by educating, in the first place, the school 

 teachers, and for this pin-pose we have sent to one of the. 

 Agricultural Colleges of India Poona four selected students 

 to take a three years' course. They are returning next year 

 to Ceylon, and in the meantime we are getting ready with our 

 buildings and our organization to begin upon the education 

 of the teachers. Our object is that agriculture shall become 

 a subject in the curriculum of the vernacular schools, just as 

 arithmetic or history is now. The next question is the educa- 

 tion of what we call the conductor or overseer class. As a. 

 rule in Ceylon, and also in many other tropical countries, this: 

 class of man can speak English, and it is our intention to try. 

 and graft on to our organization for the education of the 

 school teachers the education of the conductor. Of course, 



