66 
since many men who have been trained in the West Indies, 
and especially in Trinidad, are doing well in West Africa, 
which, with Equatorial Africa generally, is one of the most, 
if not actually the most, important tropical centres affecting 
British interests in the world; and as it would be impossible 
to train whites properly in Equatorial Africa, they must come 
down to a Trinidad College as being the centre most accessible 
and surrounded by the class of labour and conditions generally 
most closely resembling those that prevail in West and 
Equatorial Africa. 
I attach this importance to tropical Africa because we are 
told that South Africa is getting drier every year, and that this 
has generally been ascribed to the destruction of trees; and as 
the Royal Commission on Indian Finance tells us that the mon- 
soon to which India owes so much, and on which the food of 
millions is dependent, is derived from the heart of Africa,’ not 
only, therefore, is it necessary to make the question of the 
deforestation of Africa a national one, but even an inter- 
national one, as otherwise famine and death will come, sooner 
or later, to Africa and India alike; and since we cannot train 
our experts in Africa, I maintain that Trinidad or elsewhere in 
the Western Hemisphere offers the most suitable site for an 
Agricultural College for Englishmen going to Africa as well 
as to the West Indies, and Latin-America generally. 
The following papers were taken as read :— 
AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION AND ITS ADJUSTMENT TO 
THE NEEDS OF THE STUDENTS. 
By Francis Watts, C.M.G., D.Sc., F.L.C.., 
Imperial Commissioner of Agriculture for the West Indies. 
[ ABSTRACT. ] 
This paper, while dealing with the question in a general 
manner, has as its basis the conditions of tropical agriculture 
in the British West Indies. 
In discussing agricultural education there is often a want of 
precision of thought as to the class of pupil under consideration 
and the purpose for which he is to be trained; as a consequence 
the training suggested is often ill-adjusted to the educational 
and social status of the pupil and to his subsequent life’s work. 
1 In the same way as Sir Ernest Shackleton tells us the ice season in 
the Antarctic affects the rainfall of Chile and Argentina. 
