98 
Technical Education in Agriculture. 
Returns of Great Britain. The Returns for the year 1890 have 
come out — for the first time — under the direction of Major 
Craigie, who is singularly apt in the art of presenting statistics. 
A decided improvement, especially in the matter of comparison, is 
noticeable in the current Returns. We learn for the first time the 
sources of certain agricultural products which are placed upon 
our markets to compete with the home products. In the course 
of the tables there may be observed quite a dozen distinctive 
details which have never hitherto been apparent in the Returns. 
It is submitted that statistics should enter into an agriculturist's 
course of study as a part of his technical education. It can 
hardly be called a pure science, but it is a branch of knowledge 
in which scientific principles are largely involved — especially iu 
the little understood process of the determination of averages — 
and which bears an essential relationship to the commercial con- 
dition of the country. 
Field Experiments. 
Another subject connected with teclinical instruction is that 
relating to field experiments. Field experiment, in the strict 
sense of the term, is the most hazardous kind of inquiry that 
any scientific investigator can enter upon. It is surrounded by 
so many difiiculties and so many chances, and the errors of 
experiment — to use a phrase well known to scientists — are so 
great, that it requires a mind of the first capacity to eliminate 
these incidental errors and arrive at the truth. Fortunately we 
have, in England, the finest type of experimental farm in the 
world — that at Rothamsted. But that farm has been carried on 
under such exceedingly careful conditions that, if anyone will 
take the trouble to study the results established there, and in 
particular note the exti-eme exactitude which has characterised 
the work throughout, he will become conscious of how immensely 
difiicult it would be to parallel these exjieriments elsewhere. 
The successful prosecution of such investigations demands con- 
siderable experience. How, then, can we rely upon the judgment 
of a young agriculturist — a beginner ? The student is hardly 
the person to ask for an opinion on an experimental point, or for 
the interpretation of experimental evidence. As well might we 
make a law student a judge in order to train him for a barrister. 
What wo really want are men of trained habits of thought and of 
ripe experience. These are the men to whom such problems in 
original research more directly appeal. In no other industry, 
involving scientific principles, except that of agriculture, has it 
pvpr bpfii sncrgi'stiMl thnt tlie cnidc student should be educated 
