EDUCATION. 143 



awarded to the school, viz. : — First and Second prizes in the fresh butter 

 classes, special prize for salt butter, special prize given by the judges for 

 excellency of entries, and also the Champion Cup presented by the Lord 

 Mayor and Corporation of the City of London for the best butter exhibited. 

 The young women who are educated as dairymaids in the school are chiefly 

 the daughters of Munster farmers. The stipend paid by each for the six 

 weeks' course is only ^^"3. As I have said, the Cork butter trade had 

 declined in its reputation. The success, so rapid and complete, of this 

 school is said already to have increased the value of the dairy produce of 

 Munster by so large a sum that I hesitate to record it. But there can be 

 no doubt whatever that this propitious experiment has proved not only to 

 be a turning-point in the fortunes of Irish agriculture, but a practical lesson 

 to the whole population of Munster that education is not a device of states- 

 men to make people only masters of books and of sciences, but that, wisely 

 directed, it is all the while a certain means of promoting their material 

 prosperity. 



For many years, however, it had occurred to the Board that, whilst every 

 rural National school in the country could not be 

 Agricultural organised in the strict sense as an agricultural school. 



Instruction in Rural every such school might readily be made to become 

 National Schools, an efficient instrument for the inculcation of sound 

 instruction in the fundamental principles of agricul- 

 tural science. To this the Commissioners looked with more hope than even 

 to the successful working of a limited number of expository (model) farms. 

 And that there might be no misconception about their views, they laid it 

 down that agriculture in a prescribed course should be a subject of obliga- 

 tory instruction, like reading, or writing, or arithmetic, in the three upper 

 classes (standards), viz., the fourth, fifth, and sixth of every boys' rural 

 school. 



To encourage the teachers to promote the success of this project a special 

 results fee of 4^-. or 55'., according to class, is awarded for proficiency. In 

 1 88 1 the number of boys examined in agriculture under this provision was 

 37,476, and the number of " passes," that is, of boys who earned the results 

 fees for their teachers, was 18,517. But whilst thus stimulating agricultural 

 knowledge in all rural schools it v.'as felt that, if the teachers themselves 

 could become possessed of something more than the mere book-knowledge 

 of the science of agriculture, which every master must exhibit in order to 

 obtain a certificate of classification as a National teacher, our new agricul- 

 tural experiment, the most hopeful we had hitherto tried, would be all the 

 more likely to prove a success. 



The male students in the Normal College, Marlborough-street, about 100, 

 each year get sound practical instruction upon the Glasnevin farm through- 

 out the period of their training. So far as they are concerned, there is no 

 gap or want in their agricultural training. But to help other teachers to 

 obtain the same advantages it was arranged, in 1881, to bring up classes of 

 masters from year to year, of about fifty in each class, to Glasnevin, at the 

 public expense, for a special practical course of six weeks' duration. In 

 1881, fifty-two, and in 1882, seventy, attended at Glasnevin for this special 

 purpose. The report of the superintendent is highly favourable to this 

 experiment. 



But, besides the results fees which we grant for mere book-knowledge of 

 agricultural science, we give, in the case of ninety-three National schools to 



