A PROFESSOR OF AGRICULTURE ON AMERICA INVESTIGATIONS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2817, 4 March 1908, Page 6

A PROFESSOR OF AGRICULTURE ON AMERICA INVESTIGATIONS.

Professor Robert Wallace, of Edinburgh University, opened the Garton Course of Lectures last October with a brief outline of the important work of agricultural I investigation which he found during his I recent tour of inquiry was being carried on in Canada, the United States, and Mexico, and has sent the text of the lecture. Professor Wallace, during a journey of over 20,000 miles, occupying ' five months, visited many c^ the leading experiment stations, and also a dozen agricultural colleges (each with its associated experiment station) and many other institutions, and his- opinion regarding the investigations ie of interest a 6 being that of an independent yet qualified observer. American methods of investigation and experiment are so insistently held up to agriculturists of other countries for imitation that the opinion of a worker to some extent on the 6ame field is valuable, and the details which it was promised would be give in following lectures should also be interesting. Meantime, only the general conclusions can be quoted. Professor Wallace endorses the high estimate placed upon the United States Department of Agriculture as by far tne greatest organisation of its kind in the world. The department has an annual revenue of nearly £1,500,000 sterling, and the total scientific agricultural effort in the United States commands an income of £3.000,000 sterling. One and a-half millions of American farmers participate in the advantages derived from the circulation of the department bulletins, which are read and appreciated, and the statistical returns and weather reports are eagerly sought for. The boundaines of the area of cultivation ara being extended by the Irrigation Division on the one hand and the Dry Land Division on the i other, a vast amount of hitherto uncultivated and practically waste land being brought into use ; and plants suitable for cultivation in the innumerable conditions which exist in the various parts of the country are distributed by the Plant Introduction Division, while native and established plants are being improved by selection and breeding. Of the plant-bVeeding experiments and their results, Professor Wallace remarks that little seems to have b&en done for actual cross-fertilisation on the Garton lines ; whatever may have been done in that direction seemed to him to have been overshadowed by the results c.f selection of conspicuously meritorious specimens of well-established and proved varieties, breeding up new and vigorous and at the same time pure stocks from secluded and single specimens — some very valuable results have been got in this Tvay. Attention is now paid in the agricultural colleges to instruction in the judging of grain. It is estimated that the gain to the agricultural community from results obtained - along the two lines referred to amounts to many millions of dollars annually, and the practical utility of the movement has drawn the agricultural colleges and the farming community closely together, to the mutual advantage of both. Stock-judging is also now an important feature of the class work of all colleges in the States and Canada. There is, in the opinion of some authorities, a danger that in the United States subdivision of the subject known as Agriculture may be going too far, making the curriculum too long for the oidinary student, and tending to make specialists of men who have not first acquired a wide knowledge of the principles and practices which underlie the central subject — agriculture, including live stock (which latter clearly describes the instruction at our own College}. The rapid advance in agricultural teaching and research has caused a demand for trained teachers and skilled experimenters far in excess of the supply, and consequently some of those who have been appointed have not been quite of the status required to secure the best results ; but this will soon be righted under the influence of the enthusiasm with which tho subjects are being studied. In teaching, the widest success has been attained, not in The higher work and in the long and exhaustive graduation co-urees, extending usually over icur yefirs. but in the short elenentary courses for farmers' sons mid others, who come at n slack boosou of l!u« year to Attend a few lectur«> and pick up sucli information ns it is poßsiblo to communicate tj them in a few wwks. As the work becomes known and i\n vuluo t>i>preoiated by thr rultivnting uiid Ktocltrearing communities, the* length of tiw» time spent at these short courses in gradually being extended and the courses re- | pealed on a more advanitti suile, so Unit, I ultimately, there may bp time nvuilablu fi> get really useful prnctical results. An- | other advantage which Professor Wallace sees in the short course is thnt it creates | enthusiasm on the subject and o desire for \ more knowledge, which is in some measure satisfied by study of the bulletins and leaflets of the Agricultural Department. Professor Wallace condemns the practice j of paying inadequate salaries to agricultural teachers and investigators as having -seriously deterred progress ; a slow improvement in this matter ifi noted. He notes at the same time that the American colleges do not suffer from scarcity of ; money, as the British agricultural institu- | tions do (and as agricultural experiment and research in New Zealand still more acutely do). Professor Wallace found that the difficulty of getting the practical agriculturist interested in scientific work is disappearing more rapidly ia the States

and Canada than in any other country. This he attributes to the practical methods of teaching and to the est.sbli6hm.ent of experiment stations and farmers' institutes ; also in great degree to the creation of women's institutes, find to the part women have taken to popularise the whole movement, particularly in connection with the comprehensive domestic science, or household economy woik, which is now associated with many of the agricultural colleges. The question when best to introduce the practical fisld work into the training of the young farmer has been most successfully solved by devoting the winter months to lectures and laboratory work, and the other half of the year tf> field practice. At Winnipeg this was the system adopted after a Government Commission had inquired into the various systems in force on the North American continent. (The New Zealand summer and winter seasons are not so clearly defined ds the American, and the system approved in America would require modification here.) How to carry agricultural teaching to the ci eat mass of the people who are unable to leave their land -at all is not a finally settled problem, but the trend is strongly towards the utilisation of the country schoolmaster. A strong and hopeful effort is being made to establish throughout America, a system of intermediate school education which would occupy a position between the existing lower-grade schools and the agricultural colleges and. universities. The fate of this will depend upon whether or not the substantial funds required will be available. This, it is worthy of remark, is the only point at which the question of funds arise® during Professor Wallace's American inquiries. In New Zealand the question is always uppermost. Few of those who talk glibly of establishing agricultural coile-ges and experiment farms in this Dominion have any conception of the lost of these institutions. They are, however, indispensable to the progress of agriculture — nowhere more so than in New Zealand, with its multifarious and widely divergent conditions — and it is to be deplored that the era of prosperity which the Dominion is eniovinsr is passing on. if not passing by, without, their being provided. Some provision for research and experiment, as well as for instruction, must soon be made, and Professor Wallace's lecture is useful as showing in what directions and by what systems the best results have been attained. Seed selection, which, according to Professor Wallace has produced the greatest results, can be carried out l»y any farmer, without financial expenditure, as has repeatedly been urged in these columns.