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Its possible sphere of action in this direction was 

 limited to a degree that rendered almost nugatory any 

 efforts it might make. 



Still it never abandoned the tradition of what its 

 ultimate object was intended to be. What little did 

 fall within its reach it dealt with in the best fashion 

 that its means and appliances permitted. 



But what little it may have done (and of this a 

 brief account will be found in the appendix, note B.) 

 is to what is requisite, if any tangible results are to 

 be secured within any reasonable period, as the scratch- 

 ings of sparrows* feet to deep ploughing. 



And the soil we have to deal with is the stiffest of 

 clay : an indigenous agriculture, that no frost of our 

 disapproval will disintegrate; self-coherent from the 

 intermixture of the traditions and superstitions, almost 

 a religion in themselves, of innumerable past ages. 



If this Department has succeeded in some solitary 

 instance in doing a minute amount of good in such 

 matters, it is much as though a grain falling by chance 

 into the little bird's tracts, and favoured by unusual 

 fortune, gave rise to a solitary plant boasting some 

 few good ears, and bears to what it ought to have ac- 

 complished had it been properly constituted much the 

 same proportion that those straggling ears do to the 

 massive yield of some adjacent well-ploughed field. 



What that proper constitution would have been 

 may, perhaps, be gathered by looking back to what 

 Lord Mayo first contemplated ; to what he would have 

 carried out had the decision rested entirely with him. 



Lord Mayo's original conception of this Department 

 was as a purely agricultural bureau, presided over im- 



