AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION IN THE PUNJAB: A 

 NOTE ON SIX YEARS' EXPERIENCE IN TEACHING 

 AGRICULTURAL SCIENCE IN NORTHERN INDIA. 



By J. H. BARNES, B.Sc., F.I.C., F.C.S. 



Principal of the Punjab Agricultural College 

 and Agricultural Chemist to the Punjab Government. 



IT was in the year 1901 that Lord Curzon, then Viceroy 

 of India, inaugurated the policy of establishing a school 

 of tropical agriculture for India, a school which was to 

 be a university in the breadth of its work, since it was to 

 study agricultural problems first hand, as well as to train 

 the Indian students in the methods by which these studies 

 could be carried out. The Agricultural Research Institute 

 at Pusa was the direct outcome of this policy; and the 

 budget surplus of the year 1905-06 placed at the disposal 

 of the Government of India funds which enabled it to 

 expand the original scheme of one school for all India 

 into one college for each province. There had already 

 been in existence in India schools or colleges where 

 tuition in such subjects as agriculture, chemistry, and 

 botany were given, as, for example, the Poona School of 

 Science, the Sibpur College in Bengal, the Agricultural 

 School at Cawnpore, and the Saidpur College in Madras. 

 There were also one or two specialists in agriculture, one 

 of whom, Mr. J. Mollison, C.S.I., was selected by Lord 

 Curzon to fill the post of Inspector-General of Agriculture 

 in the new department then about to be formed. I shall 

 pass over the work of these schools with the remark 

 and here I quote Mr. Mollison's personal opinion that 

 the results were not satisfactory; they achieved nothing. 

 The grants which were distributed by Lord Curzon's 

 Government in 1905 placed two and a half lakhs 1 in the 



1 16,667 sterling. 



