cease to be one of the subjects provided for examination by the Science and Art Department. Should the second recommendation become a law, the sum expended by local county councils in agricultural education would be vastly increased.
Passing from England to her colonies, let us journey toward the sunrising. Stopping for a moment in Egypt, we note with pleasure the existence of the newly established School of Agriculture at Gizeh, which is under the direction of the Ministry of Public Instruction for Egypt. Its reconstructed course of study was open to students in 1898, and it provides for four years of study. Arabic and English are the teaching languages, especially the latter, and allotments of land for individual culture are made to all pupils.
Beyond the Indian Ocean lies Hindustan. Here all science study is awaiting its development. The best cultivation of India is not behind that of England as a matter of empiricism,[1] but the science of cultivation is yet to be developed. Agricultural chemistry and agricultural botany and horticulture, as related to India, have scarcely been investigated, and text-books in the native tongues have yet to be written. For this accomplishment all elementary instruction in public schools must patiently wait. For an agriculturally educated set of teachers, also, Indian youth studying in the vernacular must patiently wait. In 1889 the home Government (Parliament) laid upon the Indian Educational Department the duty of providing school "readers" which should contain elementary instruction in agricultural science, and it authorized a liberal grant-in-aid toward such schools as could furnish pupils for passes in this subject. For those students who have mastered the English language a few colleges exist. Saidapet, near Madras, with about forty students in a three-years' course, including veterinary, is a pure agricultural institution. Fourteen students received diplomas in agriculture in March, 1897.
Several colleges have agricultural departments, notably the Poona College of Science in the Bombay presidency; the Baroda College; the Maharajah's College and the Shimoga College, Mysore; the Central College, and the Sanskrit College of Bangalore. All of these are affiliated with the University of Bombay, and
- ↑ Dr. Voelker, in his Report on Improvement of Indian Agriculture, made to the English Board of Agriculture in 1893, said: "At the best, the Indian raiyat, or cultivator, is quite as good as, and in some respects the superior of, the average British farmer. It is wonderful, too, how much is known of rotation, the system of mixed crops, and of fallowing. Certain it is that I, at least, have never seen a more perfect picture of careful cultivation, combined with hard labor, perseverance, and fertility of resource, than I have seen at many of the halting places. Such are the gardens of Mahim, the fields of Nadiad, the center of the garden of Gujarat, in Bombay."
