148 Report on Agricultural Education. 
the fees paid are scarcely so large. The discipline at these 
schools is very strict : any deviation from the rules without 
previous permission entails expulsion, as also does inability to 
pass the sessional examinations. 
INTERMEDIATE EdUCATIOX. 
Between the regional schools, such as Grignon and the farm- 
schools, the object of which is to educate sons of labourers and 
small farmers in the practical handiwork of farming, there is 
in France a class of intermediate schools established on a basis 
not unlike those already described in Germany. The State 
pays the salaries of the directors and teaching staff, the Depart- 
ment the equipment of the schools, and the director undertakes 
to give an approved education, at a very moderate cost, subject 
to the condition of manual labour on the part of the pupils, who 
have to work upon the farm a certain number of hours in the 
dav. The admission to these schools is not exactlv gratuitous, 
but the payment is calculated only to represent the bare cost of 
food and maintenance. Half the time of the pupils is devoted 
to a somewhat superior primary education, and the other half to 
work on the farm. 
A considerable effort seems to have been made by the 
Government Department of Agriculture to transform farm 
schools into practical schools, but without much success, not- 
withstanding the inducements offered. Mr. Jenkins at his visit, 
which took place in 1881, only found six of these schools 
existing, five of which were visited by him. Curiously enough 
all but one of these schools are situated in the eastern depart- 
ments of the kingdom, where agriculture is most backward, 
propertv excessivelv subdivided, and methods of culture stereo- 
tvped on the old three-field svstem, and where the cultivators 
of the soil and their families are as a rule somewhat below the 
level of ordinary labourers as far as comfort and enjoyment of 
life are concerned. In such departments as the Pas de Calais, 
ISord, (kc, where agriculture is considerably advanced, none of 
these schools are to be found. It appears that M. Tisserand, 
the Councillor of State and Director-General of Agriculture, was 
formerly employed in the capacity of Inspector-General of 
Agriculture in the East of France, and that it was his influence 
which induced the authorities to take up the question and to 
establish these practical schools. 
Les Merchines. — The school of Les Merchines, near Vaube- 
court, in the Department of the Meuse, is described by Mr. 
Jenkins. " Les Merchines is the propertv of its occupier, 
M. Millon, and consists of 750 acres of land in a ring fence, a 
most remarkable phenomenon in a district where a plot of a 
