SECRETARY'S REPORT. 259 



serves as a departmental section of the training establishment 

 of the national board. Nearly 200 male national school teachers, 

 who come up to Dublin annually for " training," are instructed 

 in the leading scientific and practical facts of modern husbandry. 



2. A class denominated " Model Agricultural Schools," which 

 are either in connexion with district model literary schools, or 

 specially established as an intermediate grade between the 

 Albert institution and the smaller agricultural schools to be 

 presently referred .to. Of this class there were, in 1860 : — 



Twenty under the exclusive management of the national 

 board, and eighteen under the management of local patrons, 

 landlords, &c. 



3. A number of small, called " ordinary agricultural schools," 

 and which, like the model agricultural schools, are scattered 

 throughout the provinces. Of these there were forty-seven in 

 operation in 1859. 



4. Workhouse agricultural schools : of these there were fifty- 

 eight in 1859. 



The agricultural education afforded in the workhouses con- 

 sists of a certain amount of instruction, calculated to make the 

 boys skilled in the execution of their future labors ; and to 

 raise their thoughts to a correct knowledge of the raw materials 

 on wluch they will have to operate, and to the best and most 

 economical ways of tilling the land and of disposing of its 

 produce. 



A certain amount of theoretic and practical knowledge is 

 imparted in the school-room, which the boys reduce to practice 

 on the piece of ground attached to the workhouse, under the 

 direction of a competent agriculturist. 



It is needless to argue that such a course of training as is 

 afforded in those workhouse national agricultural schools must 

 promote the interests of the nation at large. It has vastly 

 benefited the poor themselves who have received it ; it has ben- 

 efited the rich by increasing the supply of skilled labor ; it has 

 benefited the tax-payers by diminishing the rates ; and it has 

 materially contributed to the harmony, peace, and prosperity 

 of the country, by promoting habits of industry and that spirit 

 of self-reliance which is the most efficacious preventive of crime. 

 The payments made by the national board on account of this 

 class of schools in 1859 amounted to ^363 15s., or about £Q 



