M.—AGRICULTURE. 239 
old system, working it more intensively, but they only failed the worse, 
as Lawes had told them they would. Instinctively most farmers turned 
to livestock and laid the land down to grass, but as their capital was ex- 
hausted they were unable to do it well; nevertheless much of it by good 
management came off satisfactorily. Many arable farmers went bankrupt 
and simply gave up the struggle; many Essex farms became almost derelict. 
They were taken up by young Scots farmers, attracted by the irresistible 
lure of getting something for almost nothing. They knew and cared 
nothing about wheat growing, but they were very competent dairy 
farmers and potato growers, and by dint of hard work and simple living 
they succeeded in creating a new agriculture that made the farms solvent 
once more. Gradually it became recognised that specialisation offered the 
best way out of the farmers’ troubles. Now that transport was so 
efficient, it was no longer necessary for each country or district to aim 
at being self-sufficing ; instead, each region could confine itself to what 
it could best produce, and import the rest of its requirements from else- 
where. Specialisation allowed of much more efficient production per man, 
of the introduction and the fullest utilisation of improved methods, and 
it required that the farmers should be intelligent, mentally alert, fully 
cognisant of the properties and peculiarities of the crops or animals they 
were handling, and organised for successful buying and selling. 
Fortunately, just at this time agricultural education was spreading in 
_ England. There had been since the middle of the eighteenth century 
spasmodic efforts at agricultural education at the older universities, 
Edinburgh having the credit for the most sustained teaching; and in 
1842 the Agricultural College at Cirencester was founded, which had a 
great influence in training landowners and land agents. But there had 
been nothing to reach the farmer; the great link between science and 
practice had been the Royal Agricultural Society, with its wonderful 
experts, Augustus Voelcker, Miss Ormerod, and others. A beginning was 
made in 1888 when the Departmental Committee, presided over by Sir 
Richard Paget, reported in favour of State-aid for local centres of agri- 
cultural education. In 1889 the Board of Agriculture was founded, and 
from the outset it adopted the policy of establishing agricultural colleges 
or departments of universities. The great event, however, was the ear- 
marking for technical (including agricultural) education in 1890 of the 
_ tax on whisky imposed in the first instance for the suppression of licences, 
but not so used. This so-called ‘ whisky money’ provided the funds out 
of which the colleges and farm institutes were set up, beginning with one 
only, Bangor, in 1889, and ending with eighteen in 1900; more have been 
added since. The movement spread into the village school; for twenty 
years it had been a common and legitimate cause of complaint in the 
countryside that rural education had nothing in common with rural life, 
_ that it fitted children only for clerical occupations, and was of little or 
no help to the future farm worker. The Board of Education appointed 
a special inspectorate to put this matter right; school gardens were set 
up and courses designed to help the teacher draw on the countryside for 
educational material. The purpose was not to make farm labourers, but 
to develop the power of observation, of recording, of thinking, to show the 
child something of the infinite wonder and glory of the English countryside, 
