DECEMBER 24, 1903] 
NATURE , 
(oe) 
_ 
STATE AID FOR AGRICULTURE." 
M®: T. S. DYMOND, who has charge of the agri- 
cultural education in the county of Essex, has 
published a valuable little pamphlet on the State aid 
given to agriculture in Denmark and Hungary, two 
countries with which he is personally familiar. Both 
countries can show great gains to the farming in- 
dustry during the past ten or twenty years, mainly 
the result of improved education and organisation, but 
they present an interesting contrast in the way the 
work has been done. In Denmark the initiative has 
come from the individual; the State has simply stepped 
in and assisted whatever institutions for education and 
research had been started by the people themselves. 
It is true the Government has founded and liberally 
endowed the Royal Agricultural and Veterinary College 
at Copenhagen, and also maintains the higher research 
stations, but to the cooperative societies and other com- 
mercial developments, which have done so much for 
Danish agriculture, it gives little or no direct help. 
In Hungary the conditions are very different; the 
whole organisation has been created from above; not 
only has the State founded an extraordinarily complete 
department for education and research, but it has not 
hesitated to enter boldly into business and provide 
financial assistance to the farmers in distressed 
districts. It develops horse and cattle breeding by the 
help of great State farms, it has created a flourishing 
fruit industry, founded credit banks and cooperative 
societies, and generally adopted the ‘‘ paternal ’’ stand- 
point of fostering the farming interests wherever its 
assistance could be effective. Despite the great success 
of its efforts, Mr. Dymond considers that there are 
not wanting signs of State aid having gone too far 
in Hungary and having become State interference, re- 
sulting in a certain measure of discouragement to the 
enterprise of individuals. 
Turning to our own country in the light of these 
examples, Mr. Dymond would limit the assistance of 
the State to education and research; the whole genius 
of the English farmer is opposed to State aid in his 
business matters. As Mr. Dymond points out, many 
parts of the country already possess considerable, if 
but slightly appreciated, facilities for agricultural 
education; farmers can get their sons educated at 
very low rates, their manures analysed, their seeds 
tested, they can obtain expert advice of all kinds as 
cheaply as in any foreign country. Only if you cross 
the county boundary none of these good things may be 
available, and an immense waste is going on through 
the want of system and the localisation in particular 
counties of the work that is being done. 
Mr. Dymond argues for more central direction, and 
urges that the Board of Agriculture, which financially 
assists so much of the work, should assume a certain 
peccure of control and bring the whole country into 
ine. 
Appositely enough, on the heels of Mr. Dymond’s 
pamphlet comes the annual report of the Board of 
Agriculture on the distribution of grants for education 
and research in 1902-03. From this we learn that 
the Board gives substantial financial aid, Sool. a year 
with an extra 200]. for the maintenance of a farm, to 
seven colleges of university standing in England and 
Wales, and also grants smaller sums to eight other 
schools or colleges, the total expenditure amounting 
to 8yool. per annum. This, however, represents only 
a portion of the whole expenditure on these institu- 
tions; so far as can be made out from the report, the 
a State-aid for Agriculture.” By T. S. Dymond. (Chelms- 
“Annual Report on the Distribution of Grants for Agriculture and 
Research in the Year 1902-3." (London: The Board of Agriculture and 
Fisheries, 1903.) 
NO..1782, VOL. 69] 
county councils concerned contributed 29,127l., which 
does not in all cases include capital expenditure and 
outlay on the farm. The total expenditure of all the 
county councils in England and Wales on agricultural 
education amounted to 87,732/. in 1901-02, and if we 
consider the distribution of this money, the manner in 
which comparatively minor matters, like poultry and 
bee-Ikeeping and manual processes, bulk in the account, 
a very strong case is made out for more central control, 
for at present the Board of Agriculture only inspects 
the expenditure of one-third of the whole sum. 
The weak side of the Board’s outlay is seen in the 
“ special grants for experiment and research.” The 
total allotted is 8641. 6s. 1d.; is this magnificent sum 
to be talken as an index of the official opinion of the 
importance of English agriculture or of the value of 
research? The distribution, too, is curious; 225]. is 
for repetitions of Dr. Somerville’s interesting ‘* manure 
and mutton ” experiment, 84l. 6s. 1d. is for trials of 
maize growing, 50l. for experiments on wheat; the 
Somerset County Experimental Farm, with the 
astonishing proviso that care shall be taken to keep 
records in future, gets tool., as does the ‘‘ Aberdeen 
Agricultural Research Association.” Rothamsted, 
which we were told in the Times last year is being 
starved for want of funds, gets just nothing at all. 
There seems a want of proportion somewhere. 
ROBERT ETHERIDGE, F.R.S. 
N the death of Robert Etheridge geological science 
has lost a distinguished worker who was actively 
engaged for upwards of fifty years. 
Born in Herefordshire on December 3, 1819, he 
settled in early years in Bristol, and was for some 
time employed in a business house. 
His scientific career commenced in 1850, when he 
was appointed curator to the Museum of the Philo- 
sophical Society in that city. This post he held for 
seven years, during which period he made himself 
thoroughly acquainted with the local geology, extend- 
ing his observations into the region beyond Gloucester 
and Cheltenham, and becoming an active member of 
the Cotteswold Naturalists’ Field Club. Through the 
influence of Sir Roderick Murchison (who had in 1834 
published an ‘‘ Outline of the Geology of the Neigh- 
bourhood of Cheltenham ”’) he was in 1857 appointed 
one of the palzontologists to the Geological Survey, 
working at first under J. W. Salter, and assisting 
Huxley at the Royal School of Mines by giving 
demonstrations in palzontology. 
In 18s9 he published his first work, entitled 
“Geology: its Relation and Bearing upon Mining,”’ 
being the substance of three lectures which he. had 
delivered before the Bristol Mining School. 
During the earlier portion of his service on the 
Geological Survey, he was occupied chiefly in arrang- 
ing and naming the Invertebrata of the Secondary 
and newer strata, and after Salter had retired the 
Palaeozoic fossils also came directly under his charge. 
Later on, when Jukes questioned the age and relations 
of the Devonian formation, Etheridge received instruc- 
tions to re-investigate its paleontology and _ strati- 
graphical divisions, and the results of this arduous 
and important task were published in 1867 in a 
memorable paper ‘‘ On the Physical Structure of West 
Somerset and North Devon, and on the Palzonto- 
logical Value of the Devonian Fossils.”’ 
The list of his published papers is not a long one, 
but he contributed articles on the Rhzetic beds of Aust, 
Westbury-on-Severn, Watchet and Penarth, and on 
the dolomitic conglomerate of the Bristol area. His 
work on the Geological Survey was mainly in the lists 
of fossils which he prepared for numerous memoirs 
