3- So satisfactory has been the result of agricultural 

 education in Madras, where it has been the longest establish- 

 ed, that a Committee appointed by Government to report on 

 the working of the Agricultural Department and the Agri- 

 cultural College of Madras, attached the highest importance 

 to the Agricultural education imparted in the College and 

 the Schools, and they devoted more than half their report to 

 this subject. 



4. It is often said, that the native agricultural practices are 

 the best for India and that they are not capable of improvement. 

 I was surprised to find during my tour of 1898 that the native 

 agricultural practices of the Madras Presidency are far ahead 

 of those of Bengal and the North- Western Provinces of 

 India. If agricultural education has been found beneficial in 

 the Madras Presidency, where the existing system of agricul- 

 ture is really superior, how much more beneficial will it be for 

 Bengal, which is so backward ! We have not only to benefit 

 from our knowledge of Western science and Western 

 practices, but we have also to learn the superior practices 

 followed by the non- Aryan races of the South. Indeed, Indian 

 Agriculture has been actually vastly improved by our contact 

 with the West. European planters have been the means 

 of introducing important innovations. In the most out-of- 

 the-way places of India we find European planters carrying on 

 agricultural experiments and improvements imperceptibly and 

 noiselessly. We find them growing the most delicate Eng- 

 lish vegetables even during the hot weather by cultivating 

 them in trenches. Some of our commonest articles of food 

 and fodder have been thus introduced by Europeans. Maize, 

 oats, potatoes, tobacco, cabbages, beet, papya, the superior 

 varieties of plantains, guinea grass, are all exotics. Indeed, 

 there are few English cereals, root-crops, vegetables and fruits 

 that have not been introduced with success into India, and 

 European farm implements are in common use in some planta- 

 tions. It is difficult to think of any agricultural experiments 



