100 [August, 1912. 



You probably know the story cf the West Indian planter who introduced 

 wheel barrows as labour-saving devices. His coolies accepted them confidingly, filled 

 them with earth and hoisted them on to their heads. They knew their business ; 

 according to his lights the native cultivator knows his business. It is our business 

 to try and understand his motives. Patience and an understanding of the motives 

 of the natives are then important items of our equipment. What, now, of the line 

 of attack ? In the first place I would aim at improving existing methods rather 

 than at introducing new ones, and I would apply this principale especially in the 

 case of implements. 



Native Plough. 



Let us take the native paddy plough for example and endeavour to improve 

 it as a labour-saving implement before placing in his bands an entirely new 

 machine and let us make sure that it really is labour-saving. There is a tendency 

 sometimes to condemn the native when he rejects the expression of our ideas of 

 what is good for him, but I am convinced that the fault is often ours for having 

 failed to study the case in all its aspects. A new sort of plough may be able to 

 turn over more land and yet be unable to stand the rough treatment and neglect it 

 must inevitably suffer in native hands, quickly getting out of order and hence be 

 anything but a labour-saving device or an improvement. The native peasant 

 understands little or nothing about bolts or screws or nuts. His paddy plough is 

 one wedged unit. It is light, weighing but 25 lb. and at the corners he can jerk it 

 with one hand a distance of 6 feet to begin the next headland ; and when he has 

 finished he can swing it on to his shoulder and walk away with it. I never saw a 

 European-made iron plough that could be handled like this, and yet unless we can 

 give him an implement that he can so handle he will reject it, because it will not be 

 really labour-saving. Again, the action in the paddy fields is not a ploughing 

 action, it is a churning action, corresponding more to that of a cultivator with one 

 tine, so that wnen offering the native one of our ploughs in place of his own we 

 may be — indeed I think we are— offering him quite a different kind of implement for 

 which he has no use. 



The Instruction op the Young. 

 I come now to what is perhaps the most important point of all in agricul- 

 tural education ; and that is, teaching the young generation. It is in the coming 

 generation the fruit will ripen, not in our day ; though it may be our privilege to 

 till the soil. Much can, I think, be done by a simple course of agricultural instruc- 

 tion in teaching boys the functions of the roots, stems, leaves and flowers of plants, 

 for example ; how plants feed ; what it is the soil is composed of ; the reason for 

 cultivating and manuring it ; and instructing boys in the use of modern implements. 

 For given results it will take an enormously greater expenditure of force and money 

 with the adult native settled into his ways than with the impressionable young 

 who have nothing to unlearn. But before attempting to teach the young we have to 

 educate tke teachers, and this fact places the whole question of agricultural educa- 

 tion in its proper perspective. The vista is seen to be a long one, indeed. 



