_ two years, to serve on some larger farm, as second 
| proprietor. 
| as this,” remarks Mr. Martin Doyle, “ would ne- 
| tages of having a great supply of good operative 
| the theoretical and practical diffusion of improved 
_ the system of farm-apprenticeship which prevails 
| Germany, and has for its object, far less any real 
AGRICULTURAL SCHOOLS. 
to pay for their maintenance, and to take part in 
all the successive labours of a regular course of 
husbandry, from the care of cattle and the work 
of the farm-yard, to the management of the 
plough, the hand-sowing of seed, and the keep- 
ing of farm-accounts. At the expiration of his 
apprenticeship, a pupil engages himself, during 
verwalter or under-bailiff; and at the end of 
these two years, he either may find a situation as 
first verwalter or farm-steward, or may enter an 
agricultural institution to qualify him for the 
tenantcy of one of the royal farms,* or for the 
management. of the farm or estate of an absentee 
“A system of long and laborious 
educational discipline among the peasantry such 
cessarily produce good results in Ireland, where 
husbandry is so generally defective. The advan- 
husbandmen, to meet the demands which both 
agriculture among the higher classes of farmers 
must necessarily create, would considerably aid 
all the progress of improvement with mutual | 
benefit to the employers and the employed.” But 
on some of the great practical farms of England 
totally differs from the farm-apprenticeship of 
instruction in agriculture, than the working out 
of a decent pretext for ignorant, frivolous, fox- 
hunting young gentlemen taking the nominal 
management of farms or estates. A fop, a 
fashionable idler, or any sort of young gentleman 
who has no better prospect of worldly promotion 
than to become a gentleman-farmer, and who 
scarcely knows a dock from a bean-stalk, or a 
grubber from a wheel-barrow, pays £100 or £200 
a-year of apprentice-fee to an extensive and dis- 
tinguished farmer, stares occasionally at the ope- 
rations of the farm-servants, learns the names of 
two or three crops and half-a-dozen implements, 
and, possibly at the end of a single year, is pro- 
nounced by himself and his partial friends suffi- 
ciently qualified to superintend the business of a 
farm. Training like this—if training it can be 
called—is sheer derision upon farm-apprentice- 
ship, and @ monstrous insult upon agriculture. 
In 1839, resolutions were adopted by meetings 
of influential gentlemen at Maidstown to frame 
and mature a scheme for a Kent agricultural col- 
lege, and to adopt and prosecute measures for 
obtaining such an amount of subscriptions as 
would be requisite for its establishment. In 
1840, a scheme was published for establishing an 
agricultural college and a model farm in York- 
shire; and this scheme proposed that the capital 
for the institution should amount to from £6,000 
to £10,000, and should be raised in £10 shares, 
* Each royal farm is let on a lease of twenty-one 
years ; but, to a correct and skilful tenant, is nearly 
a perpetuity. 
85 
—that the supreme management should be vested 
in a fluctuating board of twenty-one proprietors, | 
elected by the shareholders,—that the college 
should be conducted by a professor of agricul- 
ture and assistant-masters,—that the subjects of 
the lectures in the college should be agriculture, 
geology, botany, chemistry, mechanics, and veter- 
inary surgery,—that the students at the college 
should, in company with the professor of agri- 
culture, attend the farm, and receive practical 
instructions there, during six hours of each of | 
three days in the week,—that the farm should be 
conducted by a master, a matron, a farm-steward, 
and a dairy-maid,—that pupils on the farm de- 
voting their main attention to the acquisition of 
practical knowledge, should be permitted to at- 
tend some of the lectures at the college,—and 
that the farm should be managed with direct 
subordination to the market-profits of its pro- 
duce, yet should be available for all experiments 
proposed by the Royal and Yorkshire agricul- 
tural societies, provided that, in the event of 
loss, indemnification should be made from the 
societies’ funds. 
An agricultural school was founded in 1821, at 
Bannow, in the county of Wexford ; but, in con- | 
sequence chiefiy of the pupils paying only a no- 
minal sum for their maintenance, and being in | 
general too young to perform a fair amount of pro- | 
| ductive labour, it was kept in operation during 
only seven years. Its farm was a rent-free tract 
of 40 acres, poor in soil, and naturally unproduc- 
tive ; its instructional management was con- 
ducted by an able superintendent and two mas- 
ters; and its course of education included read- 
ing, writing, arithmetic, mensuration, surveying, 
‘geometry, mechanics, agricultural chemistry, prac- 
tical farming, and horticulture —An agricultural 
‘school was founded, in 1827, at, Templemoyle, five 
‘miles east-north-east of the city of Londonderry. 
The members of the North-west of Ireland So- | 
ciety, with whom the plan of the school origi- | 
nated, contributed, in shares of £25 each, about 
£3,000 towards its establishment ; and other 
parties, chiefly the Grocers’ Company, on whose 
estate it is situated, contributed about £1,000. 
The institution is supported by fees of £10 a-year 
for each pupil, by the produce of labour and crop- 
ping on its farm, and by contributions from the 
Irish Society, and from the Grocers’, Drapers’, 
Fishmongers’, Mercers’, and Cloth-workers’ Com- 
panies. The farm comprises 172 acres, and is 
managed by a steward, a ploughman, and a gar- 
dener ; the buildings are extensive and commo- 
dious, and include the principal dormitories, 
each 40 feet long, 214 wide, and 13 high ; and its 
instructional course is conducted by two masters, 
and comprises a wide sphere of both elementary 
and general education. The business of instruc- 
tion in the school alternates with that of labour 
on the farm; yet it is neither sufficiently com- 
prehensive to make the pupils: scientific farmers, 
nor so strictly professional as to. be unadapted to 
