VICTORIA COLLEGE

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 67, 19 March 1924, Page 10

VICTORIA COLLEGE

PROFESSOR OF AGRICULTURE

APPOINTED,

Mr. Geoffrey S. Peren, of Toronto, Canada, has been appointed to the new Chair of Agriculture at Victoria University College. It will be remembered that Sir Walter Buchanan, M.L.C., generously donated a sum of £10,000 to establish a Chair of Agriculture at the college. There were twenty-sis applicants for the new professorship.

Professor Peron is a graduate of thr: Ontario Agricultural College, which is the School of Agriculture for Toronto University. Mr. Peren holds the degree ot 13.1ie. Agric. At his University this involves the taking of a very varied course, and Mr. ■ Peren went through practically all the branches of study prescribed. He spent four years over this, and finally took the entomological option, and went on to do advanced work in this branch of science. He has had six years of practical farming, five years being devoted to mixed farming in Ontario, OUanagan, anil Kootenay. Following this, ha had a year of peach and grape-growing at Niagara. In 1914 he held the post of assistant to the Dominion Entomologist at the Ontario Experimental Station. He had. barely been appointed when the war broke out, and he sailed with a Canadian battery, winning his commission in the field, and being appointed intelligence officer for his brigade. In 1919 he gained the post of assistant at the Research Station, East Mailing, Kent, and the same year beoamo an inspector for the British Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. In 1920, Mr. Peren was appointed poraologist at the Bristol University Agricultural and Research Station, Long Aston, with the status of a lecturer at the university, and this position he has occupied to date. He has had the management of an experimental farm, and has conducted research and numerous experiments in pomology. Several publications by him deal with fruit trees and pests. Professor Peren, who is 31 years of age and is married, lias been advised of his appointment by cablegram, and it is anticipated that he will arrive in Wellington in the course of three months.