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elude ? How far should practice enter in forming an 

 ideal course ? Should or can an agricultural college 

 be separate from a university ? "Which social class 

 should an agricultural institute chiefly keep in view 

 to educate ? Should the study of agricultural science 

 be content with demonstrating scientific truth, re- 

 gardless of their practical application or applicability, 

 or should it aim over and above all to discover and 

 improve practical methods ? 



All those and many other points have been mooted 

 and hotly discussed pro and con without being 

 solved. Yet it is obvious that a rational system 

 of agricultural instruction can ensue only after these 

 queries are satisfactorily answered. That delicate 

 adjustment between Science and Practice is by far 

 the hardest point to settle : for between the profit- 

 seeking Practice and the truth-seeking Science there 

 lies a wide gulf in interests. While this looks for its 

 leward in the long future, that must reap its im- 

 mediate fruit. While the one is fearless of its 

 consequence, the other is only anxious of its result. 

 The Practice and the Science of Agriculture do not 

 always harmonize in their demands: and as long as 

 an educational scheme is bent upon combining the 

 two, without defining their respective proportions, 

 there can be no uniform and universal system 

 adaptable to all cases. It is likely that for years to 

 come an agricultural course will not acquire that 

 uniformity, which is observable in other departments 

 of scientific knowlege. It is more probable that 

 each agricultural institution will develope a character 

 peculiar to itself, imparting to it an individuality 

 of its own. One may excel in pomology, another in 



