Report of Committee on Agricultural Education. 71 
to the University similar to that made to other universities 
with fully-equipped agricultural departments.” The Com- 
mittee considered that, when these developments have been 
carried out, when the Royal Agricultural College at Cirencester 
has become a public institution, when an agricultural college 
has been established in Devonshire under the Seale Hayne 
bequest, and when the college at Aspatria has been placed on a 
permanent footing, “ the number of institutions providing 
higher instruction in agriculture will probably be sufficient. 
Most of the institutions, however, have been but recently 
founded, and are not yet fully developed. Future expenditure 
on higher education should pi’ovide for the better equipment 
of existing institutions rather than for any increase in their 
number.” 
Every one interested in educational progress agrees that, 
although much depends upon efficient organisation, the most 
important factor of all is the teacher. This is especially true 
with regard to agricultural education. Much of the prejudice 
created in early days was the result of the ignorance of 
agriculture as a business observed by agriculturists in teachers 
and lecturers. One witness gave an amusing instance: — “We 
had one professor come to our place some years ago, and he 
had a meeting in the village, and he told the men who kept 
pigs that the manure from them was of no value ; he would 
give them a recipe by which they would be able to put their 
fingers into their waistcoat pocket and take out sufficient 
manure to put on their allotments, and somebody called out, 
* Yes ; and you would be able to put your fingers in the other 
pocket and take out the produce.’ ” The serious aspect of this 
incident is that such a lecture would retard the progress of 
agricultural education in that neighbourhood for half a genera- 
tion. A contrast to this story is the remark of Professor 
Middleton when describing the agricultural department of 
Cambridge University. Having referred to the use made of 
the University farm for instructing students, he continued, 
“ We use the farm for demonstrating to farmers, and these 
demonstrations we find most useful. It is by means of them 
that we have got into close contact with the farmers in the 
Eastern Counties. They come there in large numbers now. 
Last year we had about 600, and we could easily have had 
more if we could have taken them. When farmers come they 
see what is being done, and as our system is that each person 
is responsible for some particular work, each one is a specialist 
in some particular business. The farmer finds that there is 
someone on the farm who knows about some one part of 
agriculture more than he does himself, and many farmers 
come there to learn.” 
