SECTION M.— AGRICULTURE. 



AGRICULTURE AND NATIONAL 

 EDUCATION. 



ADDRESS BY 



C. G. T. MORISO-N, M.A., 



PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION. 



When the Council of this Association did me the honour to invite me to 

 become the President of the Agricultural Section for this year, I was 

 rilled with some consternation and alarm as I recalled the long line of 

 distinguished men who have filled this position in previous years, and the 

 high standard and excellence of their addresses. One of the difficulties 

 that I felt most strongly was that, like many of my predecessors, I was 

 originally a chemist who had fallen under the spell of agriculture, and 

 whose fancy had led him, in the intervals of an otherwise busy life, to 

 work at problems of the soil. Now, engrossing as those problems are, 

 and fundamentally important to the business of agriculture as the results of 

 such investigations can be, I observe that no one, at any rate in the last 

 ten years, who has been President of this section has been brave enough 

 to discuss them in his Presidential Address. The reason of this is perhaps 

 not far to seek. There was a period in the history of agricultural science 

 when chemistry seemed to offer all that was needed for a successful soil 

 study, and when the chemists of the time appeared as the magicians of the 

 piece, at the touch of whose magic wand all secrets were laid bare. Then 

 with increasing knowledge, my colleagues fell under a cloud and a host of 

 other scientists began each to play his part and to add each his fragment 

 to our simple theme, until, at the beginning of this century, there was 

 collected so vast a body of data about the soils of the world that any 

 orderly thinking about the subject became almost impossible. Order is, 

 however, coming again, and coming once more at the hands of chemists, 

 and before many years are past, perhaps one of my successors may be bold 

 enough to try to present our knowledge of soil conditions to this audience 

 in a suitable form. It is a task, however, for the future and not for to-day. 

 What then was there left about which a soil chemist might venture to 

 speak ? It has been my fortune to spend most of my life at one of the 

 old Universities, where, like many people at Oxford, much of my time 

 and energy has been devoted to teaching, and it is because of the experience 

 that I have had in teaching agricultural subjects and in organising 

 agricultural curricula, and of my great interest and belief in agricultural 

 education, that I venture to make it the subject of my address to-day. 



It is not so very long ago that research and education in agriculture 

 began to be seriously developed in this country, first, on a physical basis 

 which is, and must remain, fundamental, dealing with the technique of 



