Canadian Agriculture. 
411 
Ontario is the only province in the Dominion which sup- 
plies a definite course of technical instruction in agriculture, 
the Ontario Agricultural College, at Guelph, being the solitary 
institution of its kind in Canada. The college provides a 
general commercial and English education combined with 
technical training in agriculture. The building is commodious, 
well situated, and furnished with lecture-rooms, laboratories, 
museum, and sleeping apartments for the students. The col- 
lege has been in operation for ten years, and is in a most 
flourishing condition. It is fortunate in having for its Presi- 
dent Professor James Mills, M.A., who possesses a wide and 
comprehensive grasp of the principles which should guide the 
course of an institution of so much public importance, and 
whose untiring devotion to the objects for which the college 
was established is amply reflected in the support it receives 
from the people not only of Ontario but of other parts of the 
Dominion. The technical curriculum embraces all the sub- 
jects necessary to a right understanding of the theory and 
practice of agriculture. 
Attached to the college is the Ontario Experimental Farm, 
which, under the management of Professor Brown, who so ably 
fills the Chair of Agriculture in che college, and who has 
worked arduously and successfully for the land of his adoption, 
has been productive of results of the highest value and im- 
portance to Canadian agriculture, and such as have amply 
justified the outlay which the Provincial Government incurs in 
the maintenance of the college and the farm. 
As the technical instruction of intending farmers and 
colonists is a subject that seems to possess a perennial interest 
in England, I may here introduce a few observations on the 
outlay, actual or estimated, in State-supported institutions in 
Canada. The Manitoba Department of Agriculture, in dis- 
cussing the desirability of establishing in the prairie province 
a School of Agriculture and an experimental farm, says in its 
report : 
" It has been urged upon the Department that such an institution could 
easily be made self-supporting. The experience of the agricultural colleges 
in the United States does not justify this assumption, nor does the result in 
Ontario, where the expenditiire on the School of Agriculture at Guelph, in 
1881, was 8145L, the total receipts being 3074Z., leaving a loss of 5071/., 
without reckoning interest on the cost of the farm, and of the valuable 
buildings which have been erected on it. Were the public lands in the 
Province under the control of this Government, it might be practicable to take 
steps for the establishment of a school, but in the present position of the 
public domain, it may not be considered advisable to incur the requisite 
outlay. Under the provisions of the Dominion Lands Act of 1879, the 
Dominion Government is given power to ^rant land not exceeding in extent 
960 acres to any person or persons who will establish and keep in operation 
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