Education 1 1 5 



from my personal experience in Australia, to lay stress 

 on this. Agricultural Colleges and demonstration farms 

 have played a great part in the development of the 

 agricultural industry in that country, and though the 

 farming community is notoriously conservative, it has, 

 through these means, been awakened to the possibilities 

 opened out by science. 1 should like to impress this 

 further fact on Indian parents when they are planning 

 the future of their sons. They might well pause to con- 

 sider whether, instead of sending them to join the over- 

 stocked market of the legal and literary professions, it 

 would not be better to turn their attention to the 

 possibilities of employment in scientific agriculture. As 

 the department expands it will afford greater opportunities 

 of advancement, and the man who elects this service may 

 work for himself and at the same time contribute to 

 the prosperity of his country. The Indian cultivator 

 has shown himself quite ready to adopt improved methods 

 as soon as he is convinced of their utility, and I look 

 forward to a time when demonstration farms will be 

 spread all over the country bringing the practical results 

 of scientific research within the reach of, the agricultural 

 masses. The improvement of agriculture, besides bringing 

 prosperity and contentment to the majority of the popula- 

 tion of India, will provide a worthy career for the young 

 educated Indian who desires to serve his country, but 

 does not always find the best way of doing it." 



A great deal in Lord Chelmsford's remarks is equally 

 applicable to the question of the lack of agricultural educa- 

 tion in the Tropics outside India, as in plantation rubber 

 centres, in the coconut belt, in the West Indies, &c. 



We have long tried to impress on English (not Indian) 

 parents, when they are planning the future of their sons, 

 to consider whether, instead of training them to join the 

 already overstocked market of commercial, banking, and 

 insurance clerks over here (whose work is being ably 

 carried on by their sisters so as to enable the boys to 

 fight on the field of battle, as, we hope, later on they will 

 remain fighting, but this time to protect our interests on 

 British-owned estates and in banks and offices in the 

 Tropics), it would not be better to turn their sons' attention, 

 even when still at school, to the great future that lies 

 before them, and with their help, before the country at 

 large, in scientific agriculture — a profession still in its in- 

 fancy. A profession, which, as it grows and develops, and 

 as the educated community learns to know and to realize 



