CONCLUSION . 465 



laboured very zealously. It has in parts performed excel- 

 lent work. Its publicist activity is worthy of all praise 

 — if it could only, instead of being a partly barren bombi- 

 tatio in vacuo, be made to reach all the eyes for which it 

 is intended, and through them the reflecting brain, and in 

 due course the acting hand. But it cannot truthfully be 

 said that the Board has given National Agriculture much of 

 a " lead," that it has detected and clearly indicated the 

 direction in which things agricultural should be made to 

 move, and facilitated, for all, movement along those lines. 

 However, that will have to be its task if it desires fully to 

 justify its existence — the want of which, we may remem- 

 ber, was at the time of its creation challenged by so high 

 an authority as the late Duke of Richmond. 



However, the Board of Agriculture can by itself achieve 

 only little — very little. If we want to get our Agriculture 

 into the right groove, it will, as observed, be for all classes 

 concerned to join in a common effort, in which others outside 

 it — since the entire Nation is interested — will have to lend 

 a helping hand. And if that is to be done, there must 

 be some understood, generally marked out, though withal 

 elastic and flexible, plan of progress, along lines such as 

 Nature appears to indicate, pointing to some definite end. 



To recapitulate : our first need, in the direction of improve- 

 ment, so one may lay it down with confidence, after what 

 has been said, is that of more extended, more perfected, and, 

 above all things, more appropriate Education — Education 

 which attunes to rural life and agricultural pursuits, and 

 proclaims Agriculture more emphatically than is done at 

 present a " liberal " calhng — Education which teaches, as 

 an American writer has put it, more about Agriculture 

 than about the height of Himalaya and the length of the 

 river Ganges. " It will thus be seen," so he goes on, " that, 

 while direct teaching of Agriculture is to be deprecated, the 

 giving of an agricultural tinge to education imparted in the 

 higher classes of these rural schools is a great desideratum." 

 ]\Ir. Sayer, of the Indian Government, puts the case rather 

 well \\\\c\\ he says — urging that the teaching given should 

 have more relation to the environment of the children, 



11 H 



