IN A UNIVERSITY CURRICULUM 21 



study of agriculture is not technical in the sense that it 

 is intended to take the place of a training to be pursued 

 in association with the practice of the subject. It 

 cannot, of course, do so. Any one who essayed to farm 

 land, or to manage landed property, on the strength of 

 academic training alone would be likely soon to come 

 to grief. Such a course has, not infrequently, been 

 attempted, and the results have excited the derision of 

 practical men. They have, in fact, supplied material 

 that has brought something approaching contempt on 

 so-called scientific farming, though such operations, 

 being neither accurate nor logical, can lay no claim to 

 be called scientific. It may, however, be granted that 

 the study of the scientific principles of agriculture is 

 technical education, but no more so than is the study 

 of Law, Medicine, Music, or Mechanism. University 

 study does not exempt a prospective solicitor from the 

 necessity of serving as an articled clerk, nor does work 

 in a University Laboratory of Applied Mechanics 

 enable a young engineer to dispense with workshop 

 training. But the Council of Legal Education, and the 

 heads of engineering firms, recognize that a man who 

 has gone through a course of academic training is in 

 a superior position to utilize his subsequent opportu- 

 nities, and they are prepared to excuse a large part of 

 the period of apprenticeship. Similarly as regards Agri- 

 culture. The systematic study of the theory and 

 scientific principles of farming and estate management 

 illuminates subsequent practical processes, and shortens 

 the period of practical training, and to that extent, but 

 only to that extent, it may be called ' technical '. 



Again, it is objected that the University study of 

 Agricultural Science entails undesirably early specializa- 

 tion. Whatever force there may be in this objection it 



