Education 97 



is no man living who can say that he is a fully equipped 

 tropical agriculturist because, to be so, he must be a 

 specialist. . . . Not only do we require specialists for 

 the various crops, but in the case of certain ones like sugar 

 (and we are coming to the same thing in regard to rubber) 

 we require specialists for the field and specialists for the 

 factory." Mr. Lyne could well have added : can such 

 specialists in sugar, rubber, tea, cacao, cinchona, &c., be 

 trained in England ? An answer to such a question is 

 superfluous. In these days of war economies it would be 

 waste of printer's ink to include it. 



" It seems to me," said Professor Ainsworth-Davis, 

 Principal of the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester, 

 where Mr. Kelway Bamber, Mr. James Mollison, Sir 

 J. Muir Mackenzie, and otliers were students, " that 

 instead of debating whether it is better to go to the 

 East or to the West, we should have as many colleges 

 as we want — as many as are indicated as necessary," 



" I will begin at once," were the words with which 

 Professor Carmody, Director of Agriculture at Trinidad, 

 B.W.I., started his remarks, " by allowing that the East 

 may have a college, and I will mention a few reasons why 

 I think we should have a second college in the West 

 Indies. . . . Having certain advantages (named), the 

 estimate of cost which Mr. Hamel Smith has quoted 

 will be very much less in our case." Meanwhile, all 

 interested in tropical agriculture will be glad to learn 

 from Professor Carmody that " the improvement in cacao 

 cultivation and estate sanitation since the introduction 

 of the prize system introduced in Trinidad, has been very 

 marked and most gratifying to the Board of Agriculture 

 providing the prizes." 



Then came M. Edmond Leplae, Director-General of 

 Agriculture in Belgium, who said that he and his Depart- 

 ment had read with great interest all that had been said 

 by the President, and all that had been written in Tropical 

 Life on the necessity of establishing agricultural colleges 

 in the Tropics. " A school of agriculture," he went on 

 to say, "established in the Tropics, and in touch with 

 up-to-date tropical plantations, would offer such advantages 

 from a practical point of view, that the high expense 

 should be considered only with the purpose of finding 

 a way to reduce it as much as possible. ... I venture 

 to express my opinion that two schools, one in the East 

 and one in the West, would meet the requirements better 

 than a single school, the natural conditions being quite 



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