No. 4.] BOARDS OF AGRICULTURE. 27 



ditions into the centre of Africa ; and the last instruction it 

 has entered our head to give them is that which they will 

 require in their daily life from the hour they issue from 

 school . We contend that the art of reading can be acquired 

 as easily from a series of lessons on the cultivation of fruit 

 trees as from a series containing the oratory of Burke, and 

 that the teaching of practical school gardening would be as 

 valuable as setting the pupils to commit to memory the 

 heights of the principal peaks of the Rocky Mountains. In 

 European countries we find that this has already been done, 

 and we refer you to England, France, Germany and Bel- 

 gium for the success of the scheme. In the latter country, 

 no larger than one of the New England States, we find 

 four schools for higher agricultural education, thirty-three 

 secondary schools with forty short courses in agriculture 

 and numerous courses in agriculture in normal and primary 

 schools. 



While other nations are decreasing in their relative agri- 

 cultural interests, France is working in the other direction. 

 France spends for the encouragement of agriculture yearly 

 $8,000,000. The farms of France are the best cultivated in 

 the world, and her production per capita has doubled in half 

 a century. In Paris is located the renowned Agricultural 

 University ; also three national schools of agriculture, one 

 of horticulture, one of dairying, three of veterinary science, 

 two of forestry and two shepherds' schools. We are told 

 that the fifteen agricultural colleges in France educate seven 

 hundred lads a year in the science and practice of agri- 

 culture, at eighteen pounds each. To these must be added 

 a professorship of agriculture in each of the eighty-six 

 departments or districts into which France is divided, with 

 farm schools, experiment stations, fields and colonies. 

 Besides all this, in 1850 agriculture was made optional in 

 all public schools, and in 1859 a law compelled each nor- 

 mal school to prepare for teaching agriculture and to fit all 

 the teachers of France for instructing in land culture. 



In England we understand elementary education in agri- 

 culture has been introduced into the public schools, and the 

 examination made by school officials includes an investiga- 

 tion of the proficiency attained by the scholars in the agri- 



