SECRETARY'S REPORT. 219 



price fixed for tuition, &c., put it out of the power of many 

 students to attend the course. 



The government, seeing very early in the undertaking that 

 the company would be likely to have a hard bargain, very 

 generously offered pecuniary aid in addition to the terms on 

 wliich the estate was taken, but the director refused to accept 

 it, fearing that it would injure the influence and credit of his 

 farming, as an example or model for others, if it were known 

 that any part of the funds came from sources other than tiie 

 farm itself. The same objection could not be urged against 

 the salaries of the professors being assumed by the government, 

 and this enabled the sciiool to secure a much higher grade of 

 talent in its corps of instructors, while the terms were reduced 

 so as to increase the number of pupils and the efficiency and 

 importance of the school. 



The director, M. Bella, — father of the present director, — 

 in one of his earlier reports, makes the following sensible 

 remarks : — 



" Instruction in husbandry may truly be said not to partake 

 of the nature of those branches of education which admit of 

 being pursued in the centre of large cities ; it is at once so vast 

 and so complicated, and it stands so much in need of a union 

 of theory with practice, that the chairs created in towns, though 

 they may spread a taste for agriculture, cannot in themselves 

 form expert husbandmen. 



" If government were to feel itself called upon to carry on 

 a system of farming operations in all their separate depart- 

 ments, in order to test the soundness of theories by the results 

 of practice, many difficulties would occur in the execution of 

 the task, and a much more lavish expenditure must, if we 

 may trust to general belief, be incurred, than would happen if 

 the same were in the hands of individuals. It is more prudent, 

 therefore, on the part of the State, tliat it should associate 

 itself with some scheme already in the hands of individuals, 

 and even here its intervention would be prejudicial, if its co- 

 operation were proffered to establishments vrhich did not 

 present in themselves sufficient guarantees, and if the assistance 

 it afforded were not confined within proper limits. 



" Thus it would plainly be a fault for it to mix itself up with 

 any sclieme, which did not possess the conditions of duration 



