124 Government Action in Matters 



called agricultural chemists must be abandoned. What 

 we require are practical farmers * who have acquired 

 that moderate amount of chemical knowledge which 

 constitutes the whole outfit of the existing so-called 

 agricultural chemists, and which is all that is necessary 

 on experimental farms of the kind I have suggested. 

 Any intelligent fanner who has been farming on his own 

 account for, say, about ten years, and of about 35 years 

 of age, could learn the necessary amount of chemistry 

 in six months, and the farms would then have agricul- 

 tural chemists with a thorough practical knowledge of 

 agriculture, instead of, as at present, chemists who have 

 either none, or the merest smattering of it. It must 

 be considered further — and this is a most important 

 point — that farmers would be encouraged to visit such 

 farms, and would thoroughly rely on what they saw 

 there, were the operations conducted by a practical 

 farmer. 



I think it advisable; in conclusion, to give my reason 

 for asking the Government to take a lease of my Clif ton- 

 on-Bowmont farm. It was partly to save time, and 

 partly because of the poorness of the land, its originally- 

 exhausted condition, and the nature of the climate, 

 which is both very dry, cold, and much exposed to 

 severe winds. With my system of farming I have 

 brought much of the land up to a good state of 

 fertility — good enough to produce good crops without 



* Often the need for practical farmers at the Board of Agriculture has 

 been conspicuously shown by the advice given by the Board to farmers, 

 and a striking instance of this is afforded by their Leaflet, No. 168, 

 entitled "Hints on the formation of Permanent Pastures." When all 

 the experimental mixtures {vide p. 3 of Leaflet) had failed on the poor 

 clays, excepting, as shown by the writer of the Leaflet, the mixture 

 advised by me (which contained no perennial ryegrass), what is the use of 

 advising the farmer to sow on such soils the mixture advised on page 4 

 of Leaflet, and if it has been proved up to the hilt for some 150 years 

 back that perennial ryegrass is the worst of all grasses to put down in 

 light soil, what can be the use of advising the farmer to sow on such soils 

 a mixture containing a large proportion of this grass ? 



