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and we are only waiting now for the requisite funds. We 

 shall look to this country, privately and officially, to come 

 forward and help us. We cannot do it alone in Ceylon, 

 although we are prepared to do our share there privately and 

 officially, and 1 we do want those great commercial bodies and 

 companies which are built up on the products of the East to 

 do their share here. But I want to-day just to point out to 

 you a few difficulties which have occurred to me in thinking 

 of this question, because I should be very sorry to see a 

 college established either in. Ceylon or anywhere else, and 

 failing to carry out whatever it was proposed to carry out. 

 Now in a college of agriculture in the United Kingdom or 

 in any of the Dominions a student can go in, and he can come 

 out a competent agriculturist. He can take up dairying, 

 stock-farming, wheat growing, oats, barley, roots it does 

 not matter what it is, he comes out fully equipped. He can 

 go to the Dominions, to Australia, or New Zealand, or 

 Canada, or elsewhere, and he is immediately at home on the 

 land. Now as far as botany and entomology and chemistry 

 go, the education which the student receives in England will 

 be the same in its general principles especially as regards 

 chemistry as he will require in the tropics, but when we 

 get on to crops and practical agriculture we enter a com- 

 pletely new field. What strikes me in thinking about this 

 idea of tropical colleges is that we are treading on completely 

 unknown ground; we do- not know yet how we are going to 

 grapple with this tremendous subject of tropical agriculture. 

 As I say, a student in England can become a fully equipped 

 farmer, but there is no man living who can say that he is a 

 fully equipped tropical agriculturist, because he must be a 

 specialist it may be in sugar, in tobacco, in tea, in rubber, 

 or in something else, and we cannot staff our college with 

 specialists it would be impossible. My time is up, gentle- 

 men, but I am very g'lad to have had sufficient time to bring 

 that point before you. I should just like to add this one word 

 further that not only do we require specialists for the various 

 crops, but in the case of certain crops like sugar (and we are 

 coming to the same thing in regard to rubber) we require 

 specialists for the field and specialists for the factory also. 

 I have brought this difficulty before you in order that those 

 whose minds are now engaged on this important question may 

 not lose sight of this great difficulty which I foresee. 



Professor AINSWORTH-DAVIS (Principal, Royal Agricultural 

 College, Cirencester) : Mr. President and Gentlemen I 

 should like all those present who have not an intimate know- 

 ledge of the attention which is being given in the agricultural 

 colleges of this country to the matters with which we are here 



