AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume I, Issue 2, 17 April 1880, Page 4

AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION.

The Auckland Weekly News, referring to agricultural education, says : — " Although it is true that the more advanced condition of the older countries of Europe afford in some respects a better opportunity for the development of scientific method, and of special knowledge, by reason of the greater mass of minds, the greater mental culture, individual leisure, and means for the interchange of ideas and dissemination of knowledge, it might be expected that this would in a great degree be counter-balanced by the more pressing necessities of a new country. Sweden is, in some respects, an isolated country, certainly a poor one, and offers no very favorable conditions for the prosecution of agricultural pursuits ; and yet — and it may be in consequence of it — there is a general and excellent system of imparting agricultural instruction of which any country might be proud. It is under the dh*ection of the Minister of the Interior, but is administered by the Eoyal Academy of Agriculture in Stockholm. It combines scientific research with a staff of teachers, a model farm, and all other requisite facilities. It controls four agricultural schools, or rather agriculturo-chemical schools, the State bearing part of their cost, and the Societies Economiques, of which there are twenty-six, another part. In addition to this, fourteen agricultural engineers are maintained by the State, who assist in drainage and cognate works. In the two towns of Ultisna and TJnarp, and in twentysix school-farms, theoretical and practical agriculture are taught. The institutes and the school-farms furnish gratuitous instruction, with board and lodging, to forty-eight poor scholars. And that the system is appreciated is shown by the fact that three years ago 565 pupils attended the institutes and school-farms. There are, besides, schools to teach dairy farming, and seventeen model dairy farms. Two travelling professors impart instruction as to stock. Further, the State assists in the maintenance of model sheepfolds, for experimental crossbreeding. Here we have a system so complete in its ramifications as to compass the whole course of agricultural instruction, and in New Zealand we have nothing ; andi Sweden is a poor country and New Zealand quite a rich one. But in one respect Sweden is rich. Its legislation takes a practical direction. It is not given over to political intrigue or log-rolling, or corrupt influences of any kind. It is in a state of comparative simplicity. But assuredly, if so small and almost insignificant a nation could have done so much for the promotion of agriculture, we have reason to hang our heads that we have not so much as made a beginning, and our agriculturists good ground for complaint that they and the important interest they represent should have been so completely and so foolishly neglected."

The rabbit is timid, but no cook can make it quail.

When a boy becomes ashamed to sit in his mother's lap, he is generally in business for himself — holding some one in his lap.

Lightning travels nearly a million times faster than thunder. The speed of lightning is so great that it would go four hundred and eighty times round the earth in a minute, — whereas the sound of thunder would go scarcely thirteen miles in the same space of time.