642 



Agricultural Education. 



[FEB., 



question of providing agricultural education by placing at the 

 direct disposal of County Councils large sums of money for 

 technical instruction. The result of this Act was that a con- 

 siderable sum of money, amounting in recent years to ^80,000 

 or ;^90,ooo annually, has been expended by local authorities in 

 aid of agricultural education. 



Under these new conditions, the Board took the view that all 

 the cost of instruction of a purely local character might fitly 

 fill upon the local authorities. They decided to concentrate 

 their much more limited funds on the development of institu- 

 tions of a more or less central character, through whose 

 machinery a great deal, if not all, of such local work could be 

 carried on under proper and skilled supervision, and whose work 

 and influence need not be confined to a single county. 



Another object the Board had in view in assisting institutions 

 of this class was the provision and maintenance of facilities for 

 enabling the rising generation of agriculturists to obtain a 

 th'orough training in the science of their business. Concurrent!}/ 

 with this object, the Board also desired to provide opportunities 

 for farmers to obtain advice on all technical matters affecting 

 their calling, while another and not less important purpose was 

 the training of teachers and lecturers to meet the demand 

 created by the extension of local instruction. 



For many years the bulk of the Board's funds has been 

 devoted to assisting educational institutions working for groups 

 of counties, many of them of the type of a University College, 

 but recently grants have also been given to certain other 

 centres acting in a more restricted area. The total amount of 

 the grants thus distributed was 10,550 in 1905-6. 



There are now nineteen institutions receiving grants from the 

 Board. Nine of these are collegiate centres, each of which 

 receives a grant from, and acts in connection with, several 

 County Councils. 



The remaining ten institutions differ somewhat in type, either 

 from the fact that they are supported by one County Council, or 

 are devoted to some special object such as dairying, or are farm 

 schools like those at Basing and Penrith. 



In the following list they are arranged roughly in districts 

 with the counties with which the}^ are connected : — 



