His Excellency at Lincoln College.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 19979, 14 July 1930, Page 10

His Excellency at Lincoln College.

It would not be easy to exaggerate the importance of the interest which the Governor-General has in agriculture. In Canterbury especially, where agriculture has passed through its first phase and turned to science for direction through the second, it is of fundamental importance that the representative of his Majesty in the Dominion should not onlybc willing to visit us, but comes so fully equipped to help. The address which he gave to tiie students at Lincoln College on Saturday—we are sure we may say as much as this without impropriety—mixed science so happily with horse-sense that no student who heard it will ever forget it. There was the fact to begin with that the speaker had himself been a student at the premier agricultural college in the Empire, and afterwards on the Board of Governors, and after that again the representative of agriculture in the British Government. There was the fact that he was a practical farmer, and a world-famous breeder. There was the fact that his family had provided the land on which scientific agriculture first began to be taught in an English college. But over and above all these considerations was the fact that farming is not merely a hobby to his Excellency, but the prime interest of his life, and that the chief purpose of his visit to Canterbury was to pass on his deep conviction that our destiny is to produce better grain, and wool, and butter, and meat, and cheese, and more and more of them.