68 
these posts at the end of a fixed time in order to make room 
for others. 
A scheme of reading courses followed by examinations has 
been successfully instituted by the Imperial Department of 
Agriculture for the West Indies, and followed with modi- 
fications independently in some colonies; the Imperial 
Department of Agriculture scheme makes it a condition for 
examination that the candidate (except the preliminary) is 
practically engaged in agricultural work in the subjects (crops) 
in which he is examined; mere book work will not suffice to 
gain admission even to examination. The examinations are 
divided into three grades, Preliminary, Intermediate, and 
Final, with three classes in each grade. The grades are 
intended to correspond with the three vocational grades of 
West Indian planting life: Beginner, Overseer (or Book- 
keeper), and Manager. 
The establishment of tropical agricultural colleges is 
advocated and their scope and functions indicated. Stress is 
laid on the point that consideration must be given to the life- 
work ultimately to be undertaken by the student in framing 
his college course, that regard must be had to the working 
farmer or planter, who requires only moderate training in 
sciences, but who must be afforded means of studying and 
practising agriculture as an art: hence for this class of student 
an agricultural college must either possess, or be associated 
with, a considerable area of land whereon the agricultural 
operations common to the district are carried out on a com- 
mercial scale. Regard must also be paid to the training of 
the scientific experts who look forward to being ultimately 
engaged in specialized work connected with agriculture, as 
advisors on special subjects, e.g., chemical, entomological, 
mycological, etc., and not as working farmers or planters. 
These students require different provision from the former, 
and are not to be confused with them as sometimes would 
appear to be the case. 
For adequate teaching and for the advancement of know- 
ledge it is very desirable that an agricultural college should be 
associated with something in the nature of an institute for 
agricultural research; it would be well if the Institute for 
research could be regarded as the main affair and the teach- 
ing be grouped around it. 
From what is stated it follows that agricultural colleges 
cannot well be established and maintained by small communi- 
ties; they imply a large, well-trained, and well-equipped pro- 
fessional staff and a large number of students to justify the 
existence of such a staff. In the case of a tropical agricultural 
