1 Dec., 1901.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 527 
To attain this end, it is not sufficient to let them learn some manual by 
heart, but it is indispensable to develop in the students a spirit of observation, 
to qnepice them with a taste for study, to make them acquire those funda- 
mental principles which are indispensable to a clear understanding of the 
subject. 
: Is occasional instruction sufficient to arrive at this result ? 
Evidently it is not. It is decidedly necessary for the instructor to seize 
every possible opportunity to instil into the minds of the students useful 
ideas concerning the farmer's Peceesson, but such instruction must be 
complete, and it should be preceded by regular and didactic teaching. 
A rigidly straight course must be adhered to—a logical sequence—in order 
that the child may not be confused with a mass of jumbled-up ideas which are 
disconnected, and do not fit in one upon the other. Regular instruction should 
form the basis of the whole edifice. It comprises the study of the principles of 
the fundamental laws on which the science of agriculture is founded. 
Occasional instruction is the indispensable complement of regular instruc- 
tion. Its aim is to make itself understood by well-chosen object lessons, by 
walks abroad, by conversation, by problems, by excursions, by practical work, 
by experiments. It must force its way into the intelligence of the child, and 
consequently this theoretical instruction must not consist of lessons “ by heart,” 
but it must be digested, assimilated, understood. 
One must not deal merely in words or definitions, but the teaching must 
above all develop in the pupil the ideas, the reasoning powers, the aptitude to 
instruct himself later on by his own energy and of his own accord. And this 
is precisely the reason for reducing everything to scientific principles, and 
of accepting or rejecting good and bad methods according to whether they 
agree with or are opposed to the immutable laws which regulate the matter 
and activity of living beings. 
It is only in this manner that the primary school will evolve intelligent 
cultivators of the soil in numbers anxious to follow with determination and 
prudence the modern methods by which agriculture, forced by necessity, has 
since a considerable time begun to elevate itself. 
Agricultural teaching is too often as wearisome as barren of result, because 
a wrong direction is taken, because teachers allow themselves to be guided by a 
defective method. At the same time we do not deny, having seen them at work, 
that many teachers stand at the head of the noble and important mission 
entrusted to them, and we do not hesitate to assert that their fruitful lessons 
and instruction have had their share in the immense progress achieved during 
these last few years in many parts of the country. 
HOW THE EXTENSION OF AGRICULTURE BENEFITS THE 
CITY WORKERS. 
How to keep our boys and young men on the land has been a problem 
which individual farmers have solved for themselves, but which still remains a 
problem to the generality of them. There was a time in the old country when 
farms descended from generation to generation, the young people never 
dreaming of doing anything but following in their fathers’ and grandfathers’ 
footsteps, turning and re-turning the furrows as they were turned and re-turned 
a hundred years before they were born. Why then is it that the farmers’ sons 
and daughters no longer care for what they consider a humdrum life of toil 
without adequate remuneration? The causes may be found in (a) education, 
(b) increased facilities for travelling, (c) the attractions of emigration, (d) the 
attractions of the towns. 
How is education answerable for the abandonment of a rural life? It is 
not education itself which is answerable, but it is the kind of education given 
up till very lately in every school—primary, national, grammar, and private 
