lis 



TFEBRUARY, 1909. 



suffered and the cultivator became a 

 callous and careless individual. At 

 present he does not cultivate his soil 

 even according to the system that has 

 been handed down to him, he does it in 

 a much cruder and half-hearted man- 

 ner, hence the results of about eight 

 bushels per acre of paddy. The question 

 might well be asked whether it is pos- 

 sible to rescue this degenerated agricul- 

 turist ? It is possible ; but no doubt the 



PROGRESS WILL BE SLOW 



for the start we canuot and must not 

 expect any maeic-waud results, rov 

 this malady we must formulate a com- 

 plete course of treatment to be carried 

 out by the right stamp of men in a 

 thoroughly systematic manner. If any 

 halt-hearted remedy is started and 

 carried by inexperienced men, as has 

 been done before, failure is sure to 

 follow, and it most certainly would be 

 better if never started at all, as it only 

 does great injury to 



AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 



and leaves a very bad impression on 

 the minds of those to whom it was 

 meant as an impetus. A scheme was, I 

 believe, started some years back and 

 ended in a failure. Quoting from an 

 article by Dr. Willis in the July 1906 

 number of the "Tropical Agriculturist" 

 —he says : " The teacher who has been 

 to an Agricultural School has usually 

 the characteristic faults of the college- 

 trained native of Southern Asia. He has 

 learnt great deal of book knowledge on 

 many topics connected with agriculture, 

 but has little or no notion of how to 

 apply auy of it practically or suit it to 

 local needs. If he is sent to teach, he is 

 often dogmatic in the lecture-room and 

 a failure in the field. If he is provided 

 with an experimental garden for actual 

 demonstration purposes, he is liable to 

 make a still worse exhibition of incom- 

 petence, or to fall under temptation to 

 misappropriate the produce." A scheme 

 of this kind was tried some years ago 

 in Ceylon, and its epitaph was written 

 by Mr. F. R- Ellis in the words " Govern- 

 ment has not very long ago got rid of 

 the last of a happy band of youths who 

 for a seiies of years received a good 

 salary for cultivating Crown land with 

 cattle supplied by Government and ap- 

 propriating the produce to their own 

 use." In the above quotation we see 

 very clearly depicted that it was not 

 the system of educating the people by 

 means of experimental farms that was 

 a failure, but that it was entirely the 

 gross incompetence of the instructors, 

 and the lax supervision that enabled 

 the appropriating of the produce. To 

 a very great extent these instructors 



cannot be blamed for incompetence, as 

 the training they received at the late 

 School of Agriculture was faulty. The 

 late Colombo School of Agriculture 

 (although having a highly qualified 

 Manager) was where these young men 

 received their training ; the school was a 

 failure owing (as already pointed out in 

 the foregoing article) to first, the coun- 

 try not being ripe enough for an insti- 

 tution of that nature ; second, the right 

 stamp of students not being attracted; 

 third, Colombo or any other city is in 

 no way adapted for an agricultural 

 school, as it must have attached to it 

 sufficient land for the actual carrying 

 out of agricultural operations in every 

 branch, the students playing the princi- 

 pal part. I also pointed out— and in it 

 mostly lies the cause of the student's 

 incompetency— the late Colombo School 

 of Agriculture did not apparently pre- 

 tend to teach practical agriculture, 

 except in the form of cultivating a few 

 vegetable plots, which was absolutely 

 valueless. Then, again, the instructors 

 of this institution cannot be blamed, 

 as, was it possible for the greatest agri- 

 cultural teacher extant to teach 



PRACTICAL AGRICULTURE 



in the confined limitts of the late Agri- 

 cultural School? "It was the formu- 

 lated system of training that was 

 wrong," and it behoves us to closely 

 study and analyse these faults so as not 

 to repeat them again. Agriculture 

 cannot be taught if theory and practice 

 are not combined; the students must 

 actually carry out all agricultural 

 operations not on small experimental 

 plots but on fairly large areas of land 

 in relative size to the usual size of the 

 farms in the country. The man who 

 has never handled a plough or other 

 farm implements, who has not taken 

 part in the daily routine work of a 

 farm, who has not worked in the har- 

 vesting and threshing of grain, etc., is 

 no more fit to go out into the country 

 and teach the people agriculture than 

 is an ordinary sailor of a battleship 

 to take charge and work the ship during 

 an engagement. Then, again, it must 

 not be forgotten that there are two 

 types of 



AGRICULTURAL INSTRUCTORS : 



one the professor who may not be a 

 good ploughman, and who does not 

 understand the handling practically 

 of complicated agricultural machinery, 

 such as a threshing machine, reapers 

 and binders, combined harvesters, etc., 

 who has never milked a cow, or used the 

 modern dairy machinery, etc., etc., 

 but who, from personal observation for 

 long years, understands theoretically the 



