152 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



creditably engaged in practice, upon which he has subse- 

 quently grafted science as an addition, without accepting 

 it as a substitute. In Switzerland in the lower grades 

 that restriction, originally jealously observed, has had to be 

 broken through, because the demand for teachers became 

 excessive. However, there, as it happens, the limitation 

 may well be set aside. For there is sufficient " rural atmo- 

 sphere " there to correct the want. But everywhere else 

 the condition is still rigorously necessary. In Prussia the 

 authorities will absolutely not allow a teacher on a practi- 

 cal subject to be admitted to teaching, unless he can show 

 creditable practice of his own. And that is a commendable 

 limitation. In Prussia also — and not in Prussia alone — 

 teachers are made to pass through a special course of edu- 

 cation, with examinations and a diploma at the end of it. 

 If you cannot secure instructors who, in addition to knowing 

 their own subject thoroughly, know also how to gain the 

 confidence of their rural hearers — which is a special gift 

 — your instruction will be vain. 



If there is to be an advance in Agricultural Education — 

 and on that really all further progress depends — in addition 

 to a guarantee of competency there will also have to be an 

 ample number of teachers. For we have what may be 

 termed an entire world to conquer, under circumstances of 

 not inconsiderable difficulty. Many of our people to be 

 taught we can hope to convert only by quasi-private talk, 

 such as Mr. Fitzherbert Brockholes has shown to have been 

 particularly effective in Lancashire, on their own farms and 

 about their own affairs. If such method has proved neces- 

 sary in the " brains of the country," we may be sure that 

 it is wanted also elsewhere. When the Bank of Egypt 

 first established its Agricultural Department, which subse- 

 quently developed into Lord Cromer's " Agricultural 

 Bank," in the first years it was found that, to obtain custom, 

 the Bank's emissaries must go out into the highways and 

 byways of the country, carrying bags of gold coin on their 

 backs and plying the fellaheen with arguments in favour of 

 their accepting loans. The employment of "the gold so pressed 

 upon them taught them — while at the same time unfortu- 



