TECHNICAL COLLECE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3555, 2 May 1922, Page 26

TECHNICAL COLLECE.

TEACHING AGRICULTURE.

The thirty-third annual report of the Board of Managers of the King Edward Technical College contains the following remarks: “ The appointment of a special instructor for agriculture has lead to more care and attention being given to this branch. The course of instruction in practical agreiulture entered upon is indicated in the following outline of the scheme:—Rotation of crops, four years’ course, area two acres in halfacre plots—Autumn-sown wheat, root crops (soft turnips, swedes, mangels), spring-sown oats, leguminous crops (red clover and oow grass). Rotation of crops, three years’ course, area one and a-half acres in halfacre plots—Cereal (wheat under two manurial tests), roots (potatoes of two varieties, each under two manurial tests), leguminous (three varieties of peas with manurial tests). Lucerne plot, area half-acre of the Marlborough variety, under inoculated and noninoculated conditions, in different width of drills, with lime dressing. Supplementaryfodders, area one acre, in plots each onethird of an acre, showing chou mollier, thousand headed kale, kohlrabi under phosphatic and nitrogenous treatment. Selection of grasses in an area of half-acre. Green manuring experiments in an area of halfacre plot. "Owing to the nature of the soil and its raw state, as well as to the unusually- wet and coal season, the work was carried on at a disadvantage, and the resulting crops cannot be said to have been prolific, but there is no dloubt that these experiments formed the basis of sound training, and that the boys taking part derived considerable benefit therefrom. The managers are hopeful that a considerable advance will result during the current year. Milk-testing, for which we have now four good machines, has become an important feature of the course, and the training now given in this branch is regarded as sufficient for a specialist.”

-tin the east coast of South America the potato is considered a European vegetable, and is cultivated only by those gaining their experience from the Old World. A real system of punctuation was first introduced in printed books by a firm of publishers in Venice in the sixteenth century.