488 Agricultural Education in England, [sept., 



the farmer specially asks for, and in order that he may have 

 this, it is essential that the teaching institutions should 

 command the services of trained and competent men who can 

 apply scientific methods to the study of local conditions. 



The question of the supply of qualified teachers is, how- 

 ever, a problem of great difficulty, owing to the fact that the 

 present prospects of the agricultural teacher are not, on the 

 average, sufficiently attractive to induce men of the right 

 type to take up the subject. If it is admitted, however, that 

 the success of agricultural education in this country depends 

 above everything else on the quality of the instruction pro- 

 vided, Mr. Middleton remarks that it should not be impos- 

 sible to obtain the funds that would command for agriculture 

 the services of a proportion of the most promising students 

 who pass through the universities. Unlike Law, Medicine, 

 or Engineering, Agriculture offers no great prizes to suc- 

 cessful men, but the subject has attractions which would 

 secure for it an ample supply of talent if means were found 

 of providing fair salaries at the institutions established for 

 teaching and research. 



As an aid to securing suitable teachers and investigators a 

 scholarship system should be established which would enable 

 promising students who had taken a good degree to continue 

 their residence at a university or other suitable institution as 

 research scholars for a period of from two to three years. If 

 as many as five scholarships per annum were offered, worth 

 ,£150 in the first year and rising to ^175 and ^200 when 

 renewed for a second and third year, there would always be 

 available a number of young men with a good knowledge 

 of the facts and methods of agricultural science from 

 amongst whom institutions would be able to secure assistants 

 of the best type. At the same time the work of such scholars 

 would be likely to prove of considerable value in advancing 

 agricultural science, so that the country would get a direct 

 return from the money devoted to the scholarship scheme. 



The question of the amount of public money available for 

 purposes of agricultural education is discussed in the report, 

 and it is shown that from various causes the expenditure of 

 the local education authorities has declined of late, as com- 

 pared with some earlier years, while the provision made in 



