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gations into the diseases of plants, both insect and fungoid. At 

 that college are men who know their work, who have already won 

 the confidence of the farmers and fruit-growers, they only need more 

 scope and to be made available for the Kingdom instead of for 

 the counties of Kent and Surrey alone. 



The " Midland College of Agriculture " is a valuable school of 

 instruction in dairy work of all kinds, and as far as lies in the 

 power of one man who is busy with teaching and routine work of 

 all kinds, it has contributed to our knowledge of the conditions 

 governing the manufacture of cheese and butter in this country. 

 But of the dozen or so indigenous cheeses we can only claim that 

 the theory of manufacture of one of them Cheddar has been 

 worked out, and that chiefly by American investigators. The 

 complex processes which go to make up the texture and flavour of 

 that peculiarly English product Stilton are still unknown, the 

 manufacture is conducted by rule of thumb, and the occasional 

 breakdowns have still to be thrown on the broad back of Providence. 

 Here then is an opportunity for building up a Dairy Institute which 

 may claim the title of national by the quality and range of its work. 



Other nuclei exist the " Experimental Fruit Farm " which the 

 Duke of Bedford founded and maintains at Woburn, the " Fruit and 

 Cider Institute " near Bristol, the newly founded " Innes Horticultural 

 Institution" near Wimbledon; they are all doing good work, but 

 they are limited and starved both by lack of funds and by the 

 policy which lack of funds compels of doing work that pays or 

 advertises. 



We look to the Board of Agriculture ; working with the Commis- 

 sioners of the Development Grant, to single out the institutions which 

 have got the right kind of men and possibilities of growth, and to 

 subsidise each for work along special lines until the whole field is 

 covered. " 



DRAINAGE AND RECLAMATION OF LAND. " As another item in 

 its object the " Development Act " specifies the drainage and re- 

 clamation of land. Here is a wide field for work of a different 

 type, not merely in the reclamation of the foreshores near the 

 mouths of many of our rivers where the land is gaining on the 

 sea, and where the erection of sea-walls coupled with an extension 

 of the process known in the Humber Estuary as " warping " and 

 in France as " colmatage " will gain great areas for cultivation, 

 but in those other processes of reclamation which consist in the 

 conversion of waste into farming land. 



