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XVIII.— THE COUNTY COUNCIL. 



THE first meeting of the County Council was held at Kendal on 

 the 7th of February, 1889, and in the following year a Technical 

 Instruction Committee was formed under the Act of 1889. The sum 

 of £800 per annum was allotted by the committee to agriculture and 

 kindred sciences, which was mainly devoted to courses of lectures 

 on subjects relating to agricvdture at village centres throughout the 

 county, each centre being managed by a local committee. For the 

 session 1891-92 there were 333 students on the registers with an average 

 attendance of 205, in the following year the numbers were 190 and 

 116 respectively. In 1895 the sum of £25 was given for prizes for 

 ploughing, fence-walling, and hedging ; this was increased to £30 in 

 the following year, and at a later period to £50 ; it was divided 

 between three or four of the locad ploughing associations each year 

 in turn on their applying for a grant. 



Experimental plots were early started at various centres in the 

 county, the chief of which were at Levens, Well Heads, Underley, 

 Lowther, and Williamsgill, a sum of ;f 100 a year being voted for this 

 work. In 1896 a special committee reported with regard to the experi- 

 mental plots that " they doubted whether the results from these 

 justify the time and money spent upon them," but they were not finally 

 given up till 1903, when the secretary prepared a summary of the 

 results for the last seven years, which showed that the unmanured 

 plots had almost equal value with the manured plots. 



James Bateman was the first secretary of the committee, and 

 held the post till he died in 1898, when C. J. R. Tipper was appointed, 

 and he still holds the position of organizing secretary to the County 

 Education Committee. 



In 1896 the County Council jointly, with the Cumberland County 

 Council, rented Newton Rigg Farm, which is situated about a mile 

 and a half from Penrith, for an experimental school and dairy farm, 

 the expenses being shared in the proportion of three for Cumberland 

 to one for Westmorland. The first capital outlay for Westmorland 

 was £350 with a contribution of £100 per annum for annual expenses. 



