68 
Education as connected with Agriculture. 
should lie connected special scientific instruction, with superior 
professors and apparatus, it might be expected that in these 
higher academies he might meet the son of the landlord, who, 
having passed through the public school, and perhaps completed 
his general education at the University, would seek in his own 
neighbourhood the advantages thus offered him as a preparation 
for his proper share in the practical business of life. 
But beyond these points of contact the very best union be- 
tween different grades would be promoted by the fresh oppor- 
tunities which an intermediate public system, aided by endow- 
ments, would afford, both for the best sons of the labourers, 
through merit and industry, to enter the higher schools of their 
employers, and also for many of the farmers' sons by the same 
means to pass on beyond the county schools and colleges into 
the higher universities. ' 
The views which I have thus rather intimated than urged 
respecting education in connection with agriculture are not 
recently formed, and have been applied to the test of some prac- 
tical experiment. I have found that a proprietary public school 
has been welcomed as a boon by the farmers of the part of 
England in which I live. I have found that the expense of 
establishing such a school has not been disproportionate to the 
resources of the district which it benefits, and that a self-sup- 
porting system of public education which had been looked upon as 
a hopeless problem begins to be no longer so regarded. It has 
been found necessary, in order to maintain the efficiency of the 
teaching in the Devon County School to connect it closely with 
the Middle Class Examinations established by the Universities. 
Indeed, this has been the first school in England that has 
become of itself a local centre for the Cambridge Examinations, 
and already in two consecutive years it has required the whole 
of its first and second classes to pass through that useful, because 
strict, ordeal. But these University examinations were antici- 
pated, if not suggested, by the proposal for a County degree. 
And though I have had few opportunities of conferring with the 
promoters of the University scheme, yet observation and reflec- 
tion have made me think that these schemes will not perma- 
nently supply the wants of the middle classes, while they may 
impair the position which Oxford and Cambridge now hold as 
completing the education of the higher classes. Either the 
Cambridge plan of giving a certificate only, or that of Oxford 
which confers the titular degree of A. A., must, one would think, 
be adopted eventually by both. But the certificate without the 
title will be deficient in honour compared with other degrees, 
and the new title itself, if maintained, will stand in invidious 
relation to the older titles of resident graduates. This dis- 
