144 
Report on Agricultural Education. 
annual subscription in proportion to the extent of their business, 
in'order to secure this privilege to their customers. This system 
is so general in Germany, that vendors who cannot secure this 
right to their customers have little chance of doing much 
business. It should be understood that the public laboratory 
is also available for the analysis of samples sent by other 
persons at very low fees. No less than 2000 samples of all 
kinds are sent to Hildesheim " station " in a year ; the majority 
of these are manures, feeding-stuffs, and seeds ; but soils and 
rocks, water, milk, sugar, and sugar-beet, figure among the 
articles analysed. The number sent to this one station is 
almost as large as that sent to Hanover Square for analysis 
and examination by the Chemist and Botanist of the Royal 
Agricultural Society of England. There are twenty-seven of 
these Versuch or " Control " stations in Prussia, which employ 
between sixty and seventy skilled agricultural chemists and 
a considerable number of botanists in the interests of the 
cultivators of the soil ; " whereas in England it would be 
difficult to enumerate a dozen qualified men who find sufficient 
encouragement to devote their time to these branches of applied 
science, except in the interests of the manure manufacturer." 
FRANCE. 
Higher Agricultural Education. 
The French system of agricultural education contrasts in the 
main favourably with the German system. It differs fr,om it 
in one very important respect, namely, that attendance at 
lectures and in the laboratory is as compjlsory in its higher 
institutes as in the lower schools. Failure to pass a satisfactory 
examination at the end of each term or year at once severs the 
pupil from his connection with the school, without any action on 
the part of anybody, and the pupil cannot be reinstated without 
a special order of the Aljnister of Agriculture, The connection 
of the pupils with even the higher agricultural schools in 
France is thus eminently real and practical; whereas at the 
German universities it is too often illusory, or merely theo- 
retical. As in Germany, the right to one year's voluntary 
service in the army is attached to the entrance certificate of the 
higher schools and to the final certificate of the lower schools. 
Compulsory military service is an element which requires to be 
constantly borne in mind when it is attempted to estimate the 
adaptability of the French or German systems of agricultural 
education to our own circumstances. 
Mr. Jenkins gives an interesting preliminary sketch of 
