79 
remarkable considering the limited outlook which young men 
and boys naturally have in small West Indian islands. They 
are sent to experimental stations for a certain time and the 
experiments carried om at these stations illustrate on a small 
scale what we are aiming at on a larger scale. As regards 
elementary teaching of adults in tropical agriculture, I should 
like to touch on one point to which Mr. Lyne drew attention. 
I should like emphatically to confirm what Professor Carmody 
said with regard to the value of prize competitions. In 
Dominica we have found, as Professor Carmody has pointed 
out with regard to Jamaica and Grenada—and it is now being 
done by Trinidad also—that we have been able by means of 
prize competitions very greatly to improve the standard of 
cocoa cultivation amongst the peasants of that island. I 
should also like to point out that during the last ten years a 
very large colony of peasant Sea Island cotton planters has 
sprung up. The chief characteristic of these islanders has 
been that they are exceedingly careless agriculturists, but 
owing to a large extent to the prize competitions which we 
have instituted, there has been a great improvement, and they 
have largely adopted those improved methods of cultivation 
which are essential to the successful production of Sea Island 
cotton, and it is surprising to see the exceedingly well culti- 
vated plots of cotton in those districts which were formerly 
so neglected. In conclusion, I should like to make one 
remark in relation to the question of a tropical agricultural 
college. Wherever the tropical agricultural college may be 
located, and no matter whether there may be one or two, we 
can never hope to realize within any one locality the broad 
range of conditions which prevail throughout the tropics, but 
at the same time the men who go there and work as students 
will realize what after all is the main thing, the atmosphere 
permeating the whole of the tropics, and the college will pro- 
vide a focus and a centre for those tropical countries where 
research work is being done, and will serve as a stimulus and 
a guide to many of us who are attempting to do, in the 
intervals of other occupations, a certain amount of purely 
scientific work under our isolated conditions. 
The PresipEent: Gentlemen—I am afraid we must now 
bring this discussion to a close with a vote of thanks to the 
readers of papers, though I am sure there are many here who 
would like to make further contributions to the very inter- 
esting discussion we have had this afternoon. The subject is 
bound to come up at other meetings in other connections, and 
I will only say now that the question of an Imperial agri- 
cultural college in the tropics has since the opening of this 
Congress assumed almost an international character. As 
