2O TECHNICAL EDUCATION IN TROPICAL AGRICULTURE 



Further, it is essential to distinguish between those 

 who have in their life's work to regard agriculture as an 

 art, as a thing to be done, and those who have to pay 

 regard to the sciences underlying the agricultural arts, 

 and, what is of great importance, to distinguish between 

 those the majority who have to acquire familiarity 

 with the arts of agriculture, but who have the opportunity 

 and the desire to extend their education by learning much 

 of the sciences on which these arts are based, without it 

 being incumbent upon them to practise these sciences in 

 their abstract form, and those who are destined to deal 

 with the sciences fundamental to agriculture, but who 

 have only an indirect concern in the agricultural arts 

 themselves. To the former the sciences are accessory 

 and in the nature of true education; to the latter they 

 are fundamental and the ground of their life's work. 

 Clear appreciation of this fundamental distinction will 

 prevent the tendency to offer the budding farmer or 

 planter fragments of science and to lead him to think 

 that a knowledge of these constitutes his training. It 

 will also lead to the practical farmer or planter's under- 

 standing and appreciating the scope of the work of the 

 scientific experts, whether chemist, mycologist, entomo- 

 logist, or what not, and to his intelligently and appro- 

 priately seeking their aid. 



It is worth noting, in conclusion, that advantage has 

 been taken by several students for the purposes of post- 

 graduate study of the facilities afforded by the Imperial 

 Department of Agriculture for the West Indies working 

 in association with various local governments and pro- 

 prietors of factories and plantations. Five University 

 graduates have received assistance in entomological 

 studies. One student followed a two years' course of 

 study in sugar production under the direction of the 

 Imperial Commissioner of Agriculture in connection with 

 a travelling scholarship awarded by the Government of 

 India, and one graduate from Cambridge is following a 

 course of study in practical agriculture. 



