Education 95 



Mr. Gerald Dudgeon, F.E.S., Consulting Agriculturist 

 to the Ministry of Agriculture, Egypt, and a Vice-President 

 of the Congress, explained to those present how the rapid 

 growth of plantation work in the Tropics demanded the 

 services of qualified technical men in order to obtain the 

 best results whilst the supply of such men available is 

 limited. This was entirely true when Dr. Gough read 

 the paper in Mr. Dudgeon's absence through illness, but 

 it is trebly true to-day, when the supply of men suitable 

 for tropical work has been further curtailed, whilst the 

 need of obtaining the best results from the estates has 

 been greatly increased already, and will be still more so 

 for several years after the War is over. Dr. Gioli, 

 Director and Founder of the Colonial Agricultural Institute 

 at Florence, described in his paper how the people in his 

 country had been devoting themselves to the scientific 

 study of the production and marketing of crops from 

 their colonies. What our Editor had to say on the 

 subject is already known, but following him comes the 

 paper contributed by Dr. Francis Watts, Imperial Com- 

 missioner of Agriculture for the West Indies, who 

 vigorously urged the establishment of the colleges, and 

 indicated the lines along which they should be conducted, 

 claiming, as do all the supporters of the movement, 

 that an institute for agricultural research should be 

 associated with the college, and could well be regarded as 

 the main affair to be aimed at. The endowment of an 

 institution to carry on tropical agricultural research and 

 education, concluded this authority, would, there is reason 

 to believe, yield a rich harvest to the country providing for 

 such a need. We now come to the discussion, which was 

 preceded by the President's (Professor Dunstan) summary 

 of the papers, in which he described our Editor's paper as 

 being an " exceedingly interesting and, I think, weighty 

 plea for the establishment of an agricultural college in 

 the W^estern Hemisphere, for which he adduces evidence 

 not merely based upon the importance of such a college 

 to the W^est Indian Islands, but goes further and points 

 to the importance of establishing it as a means of training 

 the numerous young men who go out to Latin America to 

 engage in agricultural pursuits." 



'* What is mostly occupying our minds to-day," pointed 

 out Mr. Lyne, Director of Agriculture for Ceylon, who 

 opened the discussion, " is a plan for higher training in 

 connection with tropical agriculture. ... A student 

 in England can become a fully equipped farmer, but there 



