340 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



are gathered into schools, conducted at night, at unusual 

 hours or seasons of the year, at whatever times or under 

 whatever circumstances may be best adapted to their peculiar 

 needs. 



It is to be particularly noted that while instruction in 

 agriculture is oifered at small expense to pupils of little or 

 no preliminary discipline, the government always insists 

 upon the longest possible drill in disciplinary studies of a 

 general nature — consequently we find in the kindergarten 

 an agricultural school for him who has had absolutely no 

 previous training, and again in the agricultural institute, 

 one for him who has mastered every stage in the long rou- 

 tine of classical and scientific training, up through the higher 

 university study. At whatever grade in this system a per- 

 son may close his training, he always finds himself fitted for 

 his special work, by a schooling which has been acquired in 

 logical sequence. No gaps have been left unbridged. No 

 intermediate field left unexplored. He leaves school fitted 

 for work. 



There are, thus, essentially different schools of five difier- 

 ent grades (in Bavaria seven) , in which practical and scien- 

 tific agriculture are taught, the method pursued in each 

 having special reference to the mental maturity of the pupil. 

 The more advanced the school, the more technical and scien- 

 tific become the studies taught. The teacher in the kinder- 

 garten seeks to fix in memory the simplest generic name and a 

 few general qualities of the plant which accidentally arrests the 

 child's attention, while in the highest grade at the university, 

 the latest developments in plant physiology are presented. 

 More or less parallel with this graded system, is a system of 

 special schools of a still more practical nature, which do not 

 have in their courses purely disciplinary studies, but which 

 turn their entire energy to practical work in some particular 

 direction. Of these special schools, we would instance 

 those of domestic economy, fruit culture, fish culture, the 

 dairy, forest and veterinary academies, etc. 



A second noteworthy fact in the German system of agri- 

 cultural education, is the strong belief that except in the low- 

 est class of schools, theory should not be united with practice, 

 and that it can best be taught in colleges and universities. 



