36 ESSEX PAST AND PRESENT 



no agricultural value at all ; while, with the help of the 

 Eastern Counties Dairy Farmers' Society, they bought 

 at 2 45. 6d. per ton fertilizers for which, as individual 

 units, they had paid at the rate of 3 43. 6d. per ton, 

 thus saving i per ton straight off, in addition to having 

 a guarantee of good quality. 



There are other details in connection with the work 

 of agricultural education at Chelmsford which might be 

 mentioned, and it is especially interesting to learn that 

 deputations of Essex farmers have made tours of inquiry 

 in Holland, Denmark, and Hungary. But the facts 

 already given will suffice to show the twofold nature of 

 the general scheme. On the one hand, the rising 

 generation of Essex farmers men of twenty-five or 

 twenty-eight years of age in whom the greatest hope 

 of a complete agricultural revival is placed, are being 

 taught to farm on more scientific principles than those 

 followed by their fathers and grandfathers before them, 

 and the willingness on their part, at least, both to learn 

 and to adopt new methods is beyond any possibility 

 of doubt. On the other hand, the farmers of maturer 

 years, who are too old to go back to school, and are apt 

 to regard new methods with instinctive prejudice, get 

 intensely interested in the field experiments ; they 

 appreciate the value of analyses which show them how 

 to save money and how to produce better results ; and, 

 finally, they make a complete surrender to the ' new- 

 fangled ' notions of scientific farming when land in 

 their neighbourhood, which for years had lain derelict, 

 not producing * enough grass to feed a rabbit,' is trans- 

 formed, under scientific treatment, into fine pasture 

 land, and the feeding-value of herbage elsewhere is 

 doubled by the same means. 



Here, then, in this sequence of events, we seem to 

 have all the essential details for a social and economic 



