Technical Education in Agriculture. 
103 
on to understand naore complicated appliances, such as the cream 
separator, the threshing machine, and the steam engine. By 
this method he would instruct the boys, teach them to dravr 
working details, and perhaps prepare the way for some of them 
in time to become inventors. Somebody has said that the 
whole of the money spent by the Science and Art Department 
would be well spent if it enabled the country to produce a 
Faraday. That is perfectly true, and an intelligent grasp of the 
principles of machine construction on the part of the coming 
generation of farm labourers could hardly fail to produce useful 
results in the direction of improvement. All mechanical ap- 
pliances would, at the same time, be subjected to better, because 
more intelligent, management, and considerable saving would 
thus result. 
There are many other avenues of instruction that might be 
opened to the boys upon a farm. They might be taught to 
take an interest in the life that is around them. It is possible 
to take up a turnip fly, and to place it before many a farm 
labourer who has been hoeing turnips for twenty years, and who 
yet will not be able to say what the insect is. Boys might 
easily be induced to take an intelligent interest in the insects 
of the farm, and the offering of prizes for collections of injurious 
insects would arouse their enthusiasm. Lads pride themselves 
upon a knowledge of the birds' nests in their districts, and even 
of the number of eggs in each. If a new direction were given 
to their thoughts, and they were led to take as great an interest 
in injurious insects, the knowledge they thus acquired would be 
seiwiceable in combating the ravages of these pests. Field 
botany would form another subject of study, and. boys might be 
encouraged to make collections of the weeds of ai'able land, and 
of grasses, together with their fruits and seeds. 
But it is necessary to not only interest the boys and girls — 
we must get at the parents also. To promote this object there 
should be some properly defined system of education working 
• from a recognised centre. There might be instituted a series 
of lessons in what might be termed rural economy, which would 
certainly attract the attention of farm labourers and possibly of 
their wives as well, and if the older people were secured the 
children would follow. Practical instruction might be given 
upon the making of butter, the management of bees, and the 
keeping of poultry, whilst a lecture or two upon the pig would 
find attentive listeners. Bees, poultry, and pigs would afford 
safe staples to work upon. Another suitable subject is fruit 
culture. In many cottage gardens good fruit trees are going to 
ruin because their requirements are not properly understood 
