Report of Committee on Agricultural Education. 65 
regularly inspected by the Board of Agriculture. Other 
counties, such as Cheshire, established an Agricultural College 
through which the whole of their work, migratory as well 
as collegiate, has since been conducted. Others, such as 
many in Wales and in the North and East of England, devoted 
money to the establishment and support of an agricultural 
department in an existing institution. The Board of 
Agriculture have, from the passing of the 1890 Act, confined 
their grants to the support of permanent institutions. For 
many years the only institutions eligible for grants from the 
Board of Agriculture were those connected with two or more 
counties, but more recently grants have been made to 
institutions such as the Colleges at Holmes Chapel and 
Uckfield acting for only 'one county. 
The story of how the twenty institutions now in receipt 
of grants from the Board came into the scheme of 
agricultural education is admirably told in a memorandum 
prepared for the Committee by their Secretary, Mr. A. E. 
Brooke-Hunt, and published as an appendix. As these 
institutions are familiar to most agriculturists, it is needless 
to particularise them here. Suffice it to say that their work 
has, year by year, expanded and developed, and that, speaking 
generally, the number of students attending them has steadily 
grown. Unfortunately the Board of Agriculture have not in 
the last few years been able to increase the amount of their 
grants in proportion to the increasing cost of these institutions. 
This difficulty has been accentuated by the fact that, since the 
Education Act of 1902 has come into full operation, the money 
at the disposal of County Councils for purposes of technical 
education has been partly diverted into other channels, thus 
depriving the institutions of any prospect of additional grants 
from that source. Indeed, so keenly have county councils 
felt the want of money in the last three or four years that the 
amount spent by them on agricultural education, whether 
through permanent institutions or in connection with then- 
own staff of instructors, has, taken in the aggregate, become 
less year by year. Instead of the work expanding with the 
demand for instruction, it has only too often been reduced. 
This short sketch will serve to show some of the difficulties 
attending the provision of agricultural education at the time 
of the appointment of the Committee. On all sides there was 
an appeal for further funds, but Lord Carrington widely 
decided that, before approaching the Treasury, it was 
advisable to appoint a Committee to review the past twenty 
years and to weigh the results achieved. 
With this introduction we may proceed to examine the 
findings of the Committee. 
VOL. 69. 
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