SCIENTIFIC FARMING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9105, 13 July 1888, Page 5

SCIENTIFIC FARMING.

WHAT IS DONE ON THE CONTINENT. •

The following extract from an article by F. M. de Barring in the Fortnightly Review for May last will be read with interest:— "In the depressed state of agriculture in England it is interesting to examine the condition of a neighbouring country, superior to our own neither in conditions of climate nor soil, but'where practical farming is the business of two-thirds of the population, and brings prosperity to tho whole nation. Our neighbours and kinsmen, the Danes, manage not only to grow for their own consumption,' but to export a considerable quantity of it. Their main exports, » however, are butter, eggs, and cattle. At the last census tho proportion between the urban and the rural population was, per thousand, 234 townspeople to 766 rural inhabitants, whilst the agricultural area is divided in the following proportions : — Gentlemen's farms, 14 per cent; peasants' farms, including both and smaller of the yeoman class, 74 per cent. ; cottage holdings, 11 per cent. ; leaving 1 per cent, uncultivated. Centralisation is less marked than with us : the contented and well-fed rustic generally scorns the town's attractions, but if he bo desirous of bettering his position he emigrates. The landed gentry, with exceedingly few exceptions are keen and practical farmers themselves, bringing education, study, and the experience of generations to bear'upon a question that interests them vitally, since, unlike many English country gentlemen, it is from their land that the large majority draw their entire income. Agricultural colleges are numerous and well attended, professors of agricultural chemistry, and of the science of husbandry, are active as lecturers, busy in the wide diffusion of their knowledge, with the results that at the present day, though the smaller proprietors may occasionally complain, still the yearly exports of enormous quantities of butter, eggs, grain, horses, and cattle, produce a fair mean average of prosperity throughout the country. The Danes, indeed, seem to have laudably determined to compete with the virgin soil, and boundless acreage of new countries like America, by raising their own farming methods to the highest scientific level. After 1870 the agricultural societies went so far as to send instructors from firm to farm to teach the people, and their instructions were gratefully welcomed. A great impulse was thus given to an export trade in butter of exceptional quality, which gained a deservedly high reputation, slightly clouded, perhaps, of late years. It is curious to learn how in Germany this idea of widespread instruction has fructified, the intelligent Teuton having even consecrated three million marks where- ! with to build him a palace at Berlin to enshrine all the learning which is to yet further enrich the sons of the soil. But then for 81 years in Germany technical education has been considered the chief shield and buckler in the fierce fight of competition. In France, too, where, in spite of fostering protective duties, farmers, great and small, but particularly the latter, do not seem at all contenta linger has been laid with pitiless accuracy upon the festering sore by no less a personage than the Minister of Agriculture, Mons. Barbe. He calls the malady ' routine and ignorance'; declares that the only remedy is instruction, and advocates the universal establishment even in primary schools of a course of preliminary study bearing upon the question, as preparatory to that offered in the agricultural colleges, which he desires to see multiplied and enlarged. "