224 School of Agriculture, Cambridge University. [June, 



nourished by private benefactions and by increasing grants from 

 County Councils, from the Ministry of Agriculture, and from 

 the Development Commission, have succeeded in establishing it 

 'in its present position. 



The writer, who has been connected with the School for 28 

 years, welcomes this opportunity of setting out in the following 

 paper his impressions of the development of the School in the 

 past and his idea of the part it may hope to play in the future. 



When he made his budget in the spring of 1889 the then 

 Chancellor of the Exchequer expected a licensing Bill to pass in 

 the next session of Parliament. This Bill included a provision 

 for extinguishing certain licences, and in order to provide a 

 fund for compensating the holders of these licences the Chan- 

 cellor put an increased duty on spirits. The Bill being subse- 

 quently defeated, the Chancellor was left with an unexpected 

 surplus which was handed over to the newly-created County 

 Councils to be used for Technical Instruction. 



Many of the County Councils decided to spend part of their 

 Technical Instruction grant, or " whisky money," as it was 

 commonly called, on Agricultural Education, and at once a great 

 demand arose for Agricultural Teachers, a demand which the 

 existing agricultural teaching institutions were unable completely 

 to supply. 



The President of the Board of Agriculture at that time, Mr. 

 Henry Chaplin, now Viscount Chaplin, foreseeing that a defi- 

 ciency of trained agricultural teachers would jeopardise the suc- 

 cess of the campaign of agricultural education which his Board 

 desired to foster, wrote to the Chancellor of the University, the 

 late Duke of Devonshire, a letter dated 25th July, 1890. This 

 letter contained what the writer believes to have been the first 

 suggestion that a Department of Agriculture should be founded 

 in the University of Cambridge. It was communicated by the 

 Chancellor to the University, who at once appointed a syndicate 

 to consider the suggestion and to report on its possibilities 



After nearly two years of discussion the syndicate presented 

 to the University its report, which recommended the creation of 

 a Department of Agriculture on a scale which the University 

 were unable to accept for lack of adequate funds 



The Syndicate, however, did not accept defeat, but set to work 

 to prepare a less ambitious scheme, of which more anon. Mean- 

 time one of the members of the Syndicate, Professor Liveing, 

 head of the Chemical Department, had in the long vacation of 

 1891, organised under the late Mr. Henry Bobinson, of Downing 



