AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION. 345 



The operations are carried on by twelve working horses 

 and eight draft oxen ; and it supports one hundred cattle 

 (fifty being milch), and five hundred sheep, part natives, 

 part Merinos and Southdowns, or crosses. On this farm, 

 for practical in,struction, are established sugar, vinegar and 

 liqueur factories, and a distillery. The annual expense to 

 the State is $25,600. The fees are only $45 for natives, and 

 $125 for foreigners the first year and $85 the succeeding. 



The Agricultural Schools, representing higher education, 

 are distril)uted, one in each province of the Pinissian em- 

 pire, while in a few cases there are more than one. The 

 course is a three years' one, and embraces the following 

 studies, taken from the official schedule : Religion, languages 

 (German and two foreign ones, either Latin, French or 

 English), mathematics, natural sciences (embracing zoology 

 and botany, physics, chemistry and mineralogy), agricul- 

 ture (embracing production of crops, breeding of stock, 

 farm management) , book-keeping, drawing, gymnastics and 

 singinsf. The greatest amount of time is devoted to the 

 study of languages, and, next to that, to mathematics. 



The Farm Schools are of two kinds, — those purely theo- 

 retical, where the students are prepared for the schools of 

 the next higher grade, and those witJi a farm attached. In 

 many of the latter class the director is a tenant farmer, run- 

 ning the school and the farm at his own risk, the students 

 paying something, and the provincial government aiding in 

 its support by a bounty of thirty to eighty dollars per 

 annum for each student. The pupils do not assist in the cul- 

 tivation of the farm, but the second year boys are taken in 

 sets of fours and taught to perform every operation. In 

 some of these schools plots of ground are given to the pupils 

 to cultivate as they choose for their own profit. The course 

 ranges from one and one-half to two years. There are some 

 forty of these schools, supported partly by the State and 

 partly by the provincial authorities at an annual expense of 

 $85,000. The graduates obtain places as foremen of farm- 

 yards, or go out as apprentices on large farms, paying a 

 bonus of from twenty-five to seventy-five dollars the first 

 year, besides throwing in their services for the privilege. 

 In these schools no instruction in the languages is given, 



