138 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



meaning. We occupied sites in different typical parts of 

 the country, in order not only to make the stations acces- 

 sible to the largest possible number, but also to test our 

 various problems under the most varying conditions of 

 soil and climate. There was manifest reason for such 

 distribution. It is sometimes objected- — just as in the 

 case of farm-schools, where practical farming is taught — 

 that experimenting, and in the farm-schools^ teaching, on 

 one particular soil, can have no general value, inasmuch 

 as soil and climate vary. What is ascertained on clay may 

 be of no use on sand, or loam, or peat. A practice very 

 much in vogue on the Continent and also in the United States 

 — far more than here — is, to enlist the support of farmers 

 in various localities for either concurrent experiments, 

 undertaken on precisely the same lines, the several plots 

 being generally small, or else, for independent experiments 

 by individual farmers, considered to possess sufficient 

 capacity and being willing to give their services for the 

 purpose. The first class of experiments are mainly for re- 

 search, the second for demonstration, the several plots being 

 intended, with the help of their owners' explanations, to 

 bring instructive facts home to farmers in the district and 

 to stimulate them to imitation. " If you can get down 

 and show a man how to do his job better than himself," 

 so writes Mr. J. McKenna, the Agricultural Adviser to the 

 Government of India, " he has plain evidence that you can 

 teach him something." And accordingly he is prepared to 

 learn. " You cannot," so the American Senator Mr. Lever 

 has put it, " make the farmer change the methods, which 

 have been sufficient to earn a livelihood for himself and his 

 family for many years, unless you show him under his own 

 vine and fig tree, as it were, that you have a system better 

 than the system which he himself is following." And that 

 is the object of demonstration plots. In Mr. S. H Young's 

 words, spoken in the American Chamber of Representatives, 

 demonstration " makes every field a class-room." The 

 practice above referred to is a good practice, because it 

 forcibly enlists individual and local interest and ^promotes 

 thinking. Whether it be further extended in this country 



