minister of agriculture also intervenes in primary agricultural instruction by issuing circulars of instruction to the teachers from time to time, directing them how to secure the best and most practical means of carrying out their work. Thus there is cooperation in this branch of study between the scientific workers who make original investigations and the ministers of public instruction and of agriculture, the result of which is a thorough organization of the teaching force and courses of study, with expert selection of suitable scientific matter.

AGRICULTURAL SCHOOLS OF HIGHER AND SECONDARY GRADE IN

FRANCE.

The existing provision for agricultural instruction in France comprises the following: (1) Higher institutions: National Agronomic Institute at Paris; 3 veterinary schools with 27 chairs; a national school of forestry at Nancy. (2) Institutions of secondary grade: Three schools of agriculture-at Grignon, Rennes, and Montpellier, with 26 professors, 29 auxiliary professors and assistants; 1 agricultural and industrial school at Douai; 1 national school of horticulture at Versailles. (3) Practical schools of agriculture, 47 in number, including 4 dairy schools and 2 schools of bird culture. (4) Divers establishments to the number of 57, including schools of silkworm culture and fruit culture and dairy schools. (5) Two hundred and twenty-two professors of agriculture, of whom 86 are departmental professors, who give lectures, hold conferences on their specialty, etc., and the remainder are employed to give courses of lectures in particular localities or at secondary schools. (6) Stations for demonstration organized in all the departments. (7) Establishments for research; experimental stations and laboratories numbering in all 64. (8) Three schools of household industry and dairy work for girls.

THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF AGRONOMY.

To the French ministry of agriculture the Bureau is indebted for the Annals of the National Institute of Agronomy (or University School of Agriculture), second series, volume 1, containing a historical sketch of the institute and its course of instruction from its foundation to 1901. It appears that this institution was founded at Versailles by the law of October 3, 1848, but was suppressed in 1852, to be reestablished at Paris by the law of August 9, 1876. To Lavoisier, the famous French chemist, is attributed the first idea of scientific instruction in agriculture in France, a plan of such instruction having been presented to the convention in 1789; but the disturbances of the revolution and later wars prevented the realization of this plan until the early part of the nineteenth century, when agricultural chemistry, having made great advances under the discoveries of Priestley and Saussure, was subsequently placed upon a firm basis by the later and more systematized work of Liebig and Boussingault. The experience gained in several previously established agricultural schools was utilized in the organization of the course of instruction at the Institute at Versailles in 1848, and this was modified to keep pace with the discoveries in science when the school was reestablished at Paris nearly thirty years later, in 1876.

The original institute comprised three degrees of instruction, the highest consisting of the Agronomical Institute proper, an institution of higher or university grade, devoted to scientific research, and two lower grades, consisting of regional agricultural colleges or schools, and farm schools, the latter giving practical instruction to the sons of small farmers. The institute proper combined theoretical with practical studies, and was intended to train and educate young men to be disseminators of the information they received there in later years, besides teaching the élite of the youths who would become farmers and small-landed proprietors. The institute was reestablished in 1876 but transferred to Paris, in order to afford it the advantage of being at the scientific center of France. It was installed in the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers.

Its list of professors has contained some of the most distinguished names in French science-Boussingault, Becquerel, Delesse, du Breuil, Carnot, Duclaux, and Schloesing. Würtz, equally celebrated, had been professor of chemistry while the institute was at Versailles.

The aim of the instruction at the institute since its reestablishment has been practically the same as before, but its scope has been enlarged and it now prepares students for the following careers: Farmers and landowners with a scientific knowledge of agriculture; professors to teach agriculture in the national schools, schools of practical agriculture, normal schools, etc.; educated managers for either the public or private service in situations where a knowledge of agriculture is desired; forestry experts; directors of agricultural stations; chemists and directors of agricultural industries, and agricultural engineers (drainage, irrigation, machine construction).

The admission examination is both written and oral, the former covering the following subjects: Arithmetic, algebra, geometry, mechanics, use of logarithms, and trigonometry; French, natural sciences (zoology, botany, geology, physical geography), physics and chemistry, descriptive geometry, lettered drawings. The oral examination, added to the foregoing subjects, cosmography, geography, and modern languages (German and English). Agriculture forms an elective subject.

The written examinations take place in cities in different parts of the country, but the oral appears to be confined to Paris. A glance at the detailed subjects of examination shows that candidates are expected to have studied the fundamental sciences, which include a comprehensive list of subjects, thoroughly. These subjects cover a wider field than those included in the course of study of the lycées, which leads to the baccalaureate degree. An idea of their scope may be obtained from the following specimens. Under the general head of "electricity and magnetism" occur the following special subjects among others: Telegraphs; electric induction; fundamental experiments thereon; principle of magneto-electric and dynamo-electric machines; reversibility of these machines; the telephone; heating and lighting by the current; the voltaic arc; the incandescent light. Under the general head of "chemistry" occurs as one of the special subjects, nitric acid; its synthesis by the electric spark; nitrification; commercial preparation. These questions indicate the practical tendency of the preparatory scientific studies. Under "physical geography" the candidate is required to answer questions upon the seas and lands of the globe; the coasts, islands, and straits of Europe; the mountain ranges; the hydrography of France; detailed description of the regions traversed by the Rhine, the Meuse, the Scheldt, the Seine, the Loire, the Garonne, the Rhone, etc., and their principal affluents; description of the coast basins; railroads, the principal lines and their connections; French colonies in Asia, Africa, America, and Oceania; the boundaries, population, races, religions, governments, political divisions, commercial and industrial wealth of the different States of Europe.

The course of study at the institute is exhaustive of the various branches of science which can bear upon agriculture. The professors are recognized as authorities in their special branches, and the lists of their publications fill many pages. It is impracticable to do more than select a few of the subjects of study which form the bulk of the report in order to illustrate their scope or the method of instruction. The first general subject given is the biology of the plants cultivated in France and her colonies, and this begins with biology in general, followed by general botany and the special botany of all the plants under discussion. Animal biology and physiology follow next. To illustrate the scope of this study, we take from Chapters I and IX of the programme the following extracts:

Biology is the study of life as physics is the study of natural forces. Relations between these forces and life. Claude Bernard and determinism. What is meant by vital forces. Influence of external agents upon living beings. Latent life. Oscillating life. Homeotherms and poikilotherms. Constant life and its conditions. ***

ED 1905-VOL 1-10

Transformation of heat into energy; animal work; equivalence of work and food; work done by the destruction of sugar, fat, and albumen; the idea of an animated motor; every vital activity has for its final object the destruction of bioplasm and the correlative production of motion and work. Experiments of Wislicenius.

Under the general head of geology applied to agriculture the general principles of geology are studied, as well as its special applications. Thus, under the action of the atmosphere are included the disintegration of rocks, transportation of dust, fertilizing dust; dunes, causes of their extension, removal of woods, fixation and utilization; the dunes from an agricultural point of view. Under the action of water are included streams, formation of alluvium; fluviatile alluvium from an agricultural point of view. The classification under "petrography" divides rocks into three classes— eruptive, cristallophyllian (metamorphic), and sedimentary. Plant pathology is, as might be expected, very fully treated, and includes teratology and diseases both nonparasitical and parasitical, together with studies of the parasites themselves. The department of physical and chemical sciences is devoted largely to meteorology, 25 out of the 30 lectures of the course being upon meteorological subjects. Nevertheless, the names of those who have been professors of physics and chemistry in this department are well known all through the scientific world. Among them are those of Becquerel and Henri Moissan. The course of study in the department of electricity concludes with a section upon the influence of electricity upon vegetation, which contains but one heading, viz, history of the attempts which have thus far been made to demonstrate the existence of such influence. In the course in chemistry it is observable that among the exercises set for beginners in the preparation of the usual gases there occurs such advanced manipulation as the preparation of marsh gas by Dumas' method, i. e., by heating a mixture of sodium acetate and soda lime, and then analyzing the gas produced by passing it over red hot oxide of copper and collecting the water and carbonic acid so formed. Naturally, much attention is given to the analysis of fertilizers, soils, sugars, milk, wines, and all agricultural products.

The course in agricultural mechanics and hydraulics gives special attention to machines and motors capable of being used in agriculture, and to drainage, irrigation, etc. Social science is represented by a course upon rural legislation and adininistrative law (the rights of landowners, highways, waterways, water rights, etc.), rural economy, and political economy.

The foregoing courses comprise the fundamental sciences of agronomy; the remainder are more practical, and include all branches of agriculture in which the preceding sciences receive application. In this division are found agricultural excursions, work of experimental stations, practical farming, care of animals, etc.

ENGLISH AND FRENCH RURAL SCHOOLS COMPARED.

The modern development of instruction in agriculture in France has attracted the attention of the English board of education, and a special report upon rural education in France, with particular reference to the nature and effects of such instruction, was published by that board in 1902. Naturally, a contrast or comparison is drawn in the report between the French and English ideas upon the subject of instruction in rural schools, due to the difference in the conditions of life in the two countries. Three main points of difference are pointed out by Mr. Cloudesley Brereton, M. A. (the author of the report upon rural schools of northwest France). These are, first, that France has a more or less rural population, while in England the population is rather urban in its occupations and tastes; secondly, England is rather the country of large farms, while France is a land of small holdings, and, finally, in the English village community the great bulk of the inhabitants are landless men. In France, on the other hand, in some communes, one person in every four is a small proprietor, and therefore the pick of the village school are the sons of peasants and are all more or less familiar with farm

work. The sons of the landless English will, most of them, become laborers. Accordingly the problem in rural schools in England is to give a hand and eye training and so raise the efficiency of the laborers. The French boys will each have a strip of land of his own, and they do not come to school to learn practical farm work, which they already know, but the programmes for rural schools as eventually worked out (in 1897) laid down that the method to be followed should be that of imparting notions of science applied to agriculture and rendered practical. Object lessons, walks, and experiments were made to take the place of the old memoriter text-book methods, and finally quite advanced chemistry, biology (practical), hygiene, together with laboratories and plats for experiments with plants were added-as is more fully shown in the programmes given elsewhere. Mr. Brereton points out that the problem of finding the best instruction for rural schools in England is more intricate than in France, owing to the greater complexity in the composition of the English rural population and to the difference in social traditions, as already indicated. Hence it may be inferred that a speedy reorganization of instruction in rural schools in England, like that which has been effected in France, may not be feasible. The national conservatism in this case, as in so many others, must first be satisfied that any extensive change in the schools, to say nothing of a radical one, is really desirable, before it will deliberate upon the means for effecting it.

AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION IN BELGIUM.

The scheme of agricultural education in Belgium is arranged in three grades--elementary, secondary, and higher. The elementary instruction includes notions of agriculture imparted in the primary schools according to a detailed programme arranged with special reference to the chief local product.

Instruction in agriculture in the secondary schools is of recent date in Belgium, the course having been initiated as an optional study in a few secondary schools in 1880-81. Since 1886 the Government has introduced it into State secondary schools generally, including the highest classical schools or royal atheneums. The lessons are open to the farmers of the neighborhood, who have taken advantage of the privilege to attend evening classes. The course in agronomy, which is now organized in 29 secondary schools and 6 royal athenaeums, includes the following subjects: Soil and subsoil, mechanical cultivation of the soil, plowing, seed, germination, sowings, harvest and haymaking seasons, fertilization of the soil, agricultural hydraulics, management, 'hygiene, animal nutrition and alimentation, drinks, maintenance.

These matters are to be treated in detail according to an official syllabus, which for the corresponding subjects closely resembles that cited from the official regulations for French schools given below.

Belgium also possesses a secondary school of practical agriculture at Huy, and two secondary schools of horticulture and agriculture, at Ghent and Vilvorde. Among private institutions the agricultural school of the Christian Brothers at Carlsbourg teaches agriculture, horticulture, and brewing, by means of very complete installations; the Agricultural Institute of La Louvière is the competitor of the Carlsbourg School, and receives, like the former, a subsidy from the State.

Secondary agricultural education for young girls is imparted in about 10 domestic training schools (écoles ménagères), generally very well fitted up, established by private persons and subsidized by the State.

Higher education is imparted at the State Agricultural School of Gembloux, founded in 1861 and maintained at the expense of the State. A free agronomic nonsubsidized institute, belonging to the faculty of sciences of the University of Louvain, was founded in 1878 on the model of the National Agronomic Institute of Paris. These two establishments issue the diploma of agricultural engineer. The curriculum covers

three years; a fourth year, which is not compulsory, prepares for specialties, such as agronomy, sylviculture, and agricultural industries.

To agricultural education may be linked the State school of veterinary medicine, of Cureghem, the only public veterinary school in the kingdom.

Education through public lectures is much diffused in Belgium, and has raised the technical education of the farmer to a very high level. Owing to the same, the use of artificial fertilizers, of oil cakes, and of various foods has been introduced, and the utility of machinery more generally admitted; the farmers understand the deficiencies of their education and the practical advantages of the new methods, and of the associations of credit, savings, insurance, etc., which have been recommended to them in those lectures.

The courses organized by the State are given by agricultural engineers or by teachers; a special official jury delivers, after examination, a diploma of certificated agricultural lecturer to the persons who do not possess a diploma of agricultural engineer. However, the greatest endeavors are made to unify the education and to intrust it to such teachers as have completed the full course of instruction leading to the specified diploma.