June, 1912.] 



Miscellaneous. 



to the new country by a love of adven- 

 ture or the hope of making a fortune. 

 They are, therefore, in need of advice 

 and are anxious to have it. Moreover, 

 the ailments of youth are easier to cure 

 than those of age. The agricultural ex- 

 perts of those countries may be compared 

 to physicians treating a child for a case 

 of measles. In India we are prescribing 

 for a patient of advanced age suffering 

 from general debility. The farmers of 

 this country have behind them the ex- 

 perience of thousands of years of culti- 

 vation and have therefore learnt all that 

 actual experience can teach them. There 

 is nothing new in this country. We 

 have lately been told that even aero- 

 planes were known in India long ago. It 

 is a fact that painful experience has 

 already taught nearly all that there is 

 to learn about the seasons and the 

 management of the soil, though by no 

 means all the cultivators follow their 

 better judgment. This knowledge is 

 unevenly distributed, and one task of 

 the department is to introduce good 

 practices from one part of the country 

 into another. Another field of work, of 

 course, lies in those matters, where 

 physical science has discovered facts 

 which the experience of practical far- 

 mers could never come across. The field 

 of possible improvement is, however, 

 far narrower than in new countries and 

 progress must, therefore, be slower. I 

 may.however.point out that in countries 

 where politics enter into agriculture, 

 the reports of the agricultural depart- 

 ment cannot safely be taken at their 

 face value. We do not know what the 

 farmers of those countries really think 

 about them. Another very important 

 point the force of which will be felt 

 more, as soon as we have come to the 

 end of the few obvious improvements 

 which can be discovered without any 

 research, is that all scientific agriculture, 

 and all agricultural literature up to the 

 last few years, deals with the agri- 

 culture of temperate climates, and is 

 founded on research work done outside 

 the tropics. Hence in India we have to 

 throw away almost all our knowledge 

 of applied agricultural science, and fall 



back on first principles, and work out 

 our proposed improvements from the 

 beginning. For example, many of the 

 methods, which farmers follow in 

 England for cleaning the land and pre- 

 paring the soil to receive the seed, are 

 based upon the effects of the severe 

 European winter, and quite different 

 methods have to be worked out here. 

 As regards research, the number of 

 scientific men in India is so small and so 

 much of their time is at present taken 

 up in work of oiganisation and teach- 

 ing that little time remains for research. 

 We must have patience till we have 

 produced an Indian school of agriculture 

 with a numerous body of workers. It 

 is seldom that any great discovery is 

 made at one step by one man. The com- 

 petition and co-operation of many men 

 devoted to the same studies is necessary 

 before much progress in agricultural 

 research can be expected. We must 

 learn before we can teach. Many years 

 of research and experimental work will 

 be required before we can fully under, 

 stand the agricultural practices of Indian 

 cultivators, and till we do understand 

 them, any improvements we may be able 

 to make in them will be due more to 

 good luck than to a solid foundation of 

 real knowledge. 



" I may then sum up the chief diffi- 

 culties which hamper the progress of 

 Agricultural improvement, as, first, the 

 want of knowledge regarding Indian 

 agriculture. Second, the fact that in 

 India so much practical knowledge has 

 already been discovered by the ex- 

 perience of generations that there is less 

 scope for a rapid advance than in new 

 countries ; and thirdly, that the Indian 

 cultivator possesses in an intensified 

 form the conservatism of the farmer 

 common to all countries, and that, owing 

 to the separation of classes here, the 

 difficulty of breaking down that con- 

 servatism is greater here than elsewhere. 

 The last difficulty, however, is the least 

 of the three. Our experience is that the 

 Madras cultivator is by no means un- 

 willing to take up a new thing if it ia 

 really an improvement. The rapid 



