INTRODUCTION 



'T^HE inauguration of the Agricultural Lectureship in 

 connection with the Sibpur Civil Engineering College 

 is one of the outcomes of the deliberations of the Famine 

 Commission that was sent out to India at the instance of 

 the British Parliament in 1878. The Famine Commission 

 submitted their Report in 1880, and for the last twenty years 

 the recommendations of this Commission have been kept 

 steadily in view by Government and given effect to one after 

 another. Canals and railways, the most .important measures 

 of protection against famine, have been extended since then 

 with great rapidity. The systems of land administration and 

 police administration have been greatly improved, chiefly 

 with a view to give security of possession to cultivators, 

 and to obtain correct statistics and prompt information 

 regarding agricultural conditions and agricultural depres- 

 sions. Finally, by the institution of agricultural experiments 

 and agricultural education, foundation has been laid of ascer- 

 taining agricultural facts with a view to increasing and 

 improving the produce of land, and diffusing agricultural 

 knowledge among the cultivating classes. 



2. Bengal, in fact, has been the last to take up the ques- 

 tion of agricultural education. There is a well organised 

 College of Agriculture in Madras. In the Bombay Presidency, 

 agriculture is taught at the Poona College of Science, which 

 is mainly an Engineering College. The Poona plan is being 

 followed in Bengal. In the N.-W. P. there is a School of 

 Agriculture at Cawnpur, and in the Central Provinces, at 

 Nagpur. Agricultural primers have been in use in Bengal 

 as in the other Provinces, though hitherto we have hz.d no 

 means of training village school masters in agriculture. 



