Report on Agricultural Education. 
53-7 
school of agriculture connected with a small farm. Some 
account of this school will appear later on. Two classes of 
persons received instruction. First, the schoolmasters, who 
qualified themselves to teach agriculture in their several 
districts ; and, secondly, a number of young men who were 
received as agricultural boarders and trained as professional 
agriculturists. 
The Royal Commission, known as the Devon Commission, 
which issued its Report in 1843, spoke in very favourable 
terms of the advantages of this school, which had then been 
established about five years. Subsequently, on the establishment 
of the Royal Agricultural Improvement Society of Ireland, 
recommendations were issued in its journal to the effect that 
every National school in Ireland should become an agricultural 
school, if situated in a rural district. Every schoolmaster in 
Ireland should be impressed with and inculcate the one idea, 
that the gangrene of Irish society is absence of practical 
principles. The original idea of the Educational Commissioners 
seems, therefore, to blend agricultural with literary instruction 
in as many of the rural National schools as possible. But 
applications for schools of a superior class to these were soon 
made to the Commissioners, and a number of model agricultural 
schools were established, solely at the public expense, in various 
parts of the country under their auspices. 
In 1873, there were in operation thr3ughout Ireland seventeen 
of these model schools, exclusive of the Albert Institution at 
Glasnevin. The original idea of blending agricultural with 
literary instruction in ordinary rural National schools lost way 
as the agricultural schools proper succeeded. It was not, how- 
ever, entirely abandoned, though the number of schools went 
down to 39 in 1861 ; but in 1873 there were in operation 115 
of these schools ; the total cost to the State for the agricultural 
instruction afforded in them was 5Z. per school. The total number 
of boys who received this agricultural education was about 4200. 
At the instance of Lord Spencer a very long minute or 
letter, by Sir Patrick Keenan, K.C.M.G., C.B., resident Com- 
missioner of National Education, appears in Mr. Jenkins's 
Report, 
It commences with an historical sketch of the efforts which 
have been made to promote agricultural education in Ireland, 
Passing over his notice of Templemoyle School, in the county 
Londonderry, of which some notice will be given later on, I 
may notice that lectures upon agriculture were given to the 
students of the normal school at Dublin as early as 1838, 
Afterwards the Glasnevin School and farm were established, and 
Sir Patrick Keenan points out that the function of Templemoyle 
VOL. XXI.— S, S, 2 N 
