Technical IJducation in Agriculture. 
by assuming a critical mental attitude with respect to problems 
lying in the indefinite region between the known and the un- 
known. 
As a matter of fact, most of the so-called agricultural ex- 
periments are directed not so much to the work of investigation 
as to thsst of demonstration. They serve as examples or illus- 
trations, answering on a large scale the same pui-poses as ex- 
periments performed in a laboratoiy. Whilst, therefore, the 
prosecution of agricultural experiments, i.e., of those directed to 
original investigation, should be kept distinct from this subject 
of technical instruction in agriculture, we may multiply, as 
much as we like, fields of demonstration, and repeat, under 
different conditions of climate, season, soil, and situation, the 
experiments carried out elsewhere. 
The Science and Art Department. 
The Science and Art Department, South Kensington, is a 
Government organisation which has exercised a very profound 
influence upon the present position of this country. It has now 
been in existence for upwards of thirty years, and it would be 
difficult to over-estimate the good it has done. It was not, how- 
ever, until twelve or thii'teen years ago that it first included Agri- 
culture as a subject of instruction in which grants were made. 
Even then it did not recognise it as a business, because it is 
opposed to the rules and policy of the Department to recognise 
any business as such. But. just as the Department had pre- 
viously recognised the Principles of Mining" — that is to sav, 
the scientific principles involved in or underlying the art or 
business of mining — so now it recognised the "Principles of 
Agriculture," and instituted examinations in the subject which 
have been continued yearly ever since. It has fallen to the 
writer's lot to take part in these examinations from the com- 
mencement, and he has — up to the present time — read and 
assigned marks to not less than 10,000 papers. There 
have been indubitable signs of progress from year to year. The 
papers written for what is called the elementary stage, by boys 
of twelve to sixteen years of age and upwards, are far superior 
now to those sent up ten years ago. The reason is that the 
teaching has improved. The answers of ten years ago were of 
a feeble character, and showed emphatically that the teachers 
themselves were ineSicient. Now the answers are of an intel- 
ligent kind, and are often very well expressed, thereby showing 
that the lads are better taught. These students are mostly in- 
structed in country schools, and chiefly in the evening. In fact, 
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