AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume L, Issue 12145, 31 August 1908, Page 4

AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION.

All the Australian States aro turning a great deal of attention to agricultural education just now, and no doubt it is largely due to their activity in this direction that New Zealand is losing the, services of Mr Lowrie, the very capable director of the Agricultural College at Lincoln, who has done so much for the promotion of scientific farming in this cuntry. In both Sydney and Melbourne young men who have taken up city occupations are being encouraged to study rural subjects, and in the former city a deputation recently waited upon the Minister of Agriculture to ask that the proposed Faculty of Agriture which is to be established at the University should be opened in the evenings. The deputation was headed by Mr Vivian Miles, the president of the Evening Students'- Association, and was accompanied by-Mr B. B. O'Conor, M.L.C., and Mr G. H. Reid, M.H.R. In addressing the Minister, Mr Miles said that he knew of hundreds of men in offices in the city who were anxious to take up land, but they had to work all day and had no opportunity to acquire the necessary technical knowledge. If the University classes were opened during the evening they could equip themselves for their new occupation while they were saving the money they required, and would be 6pared the losses and disappointments that inevitably fell to-the lot of the untrained beginner. Mr Reid was reminded by the presence pf so many young men on the deputation of; the fa^\^ the newspapers; advocated the extension of the 'advantages ofhigher education to young men who were unable to attend the University during tho daytime The need for this concession, he said/was now greater than ever, and if New South Wales was" to hold' its own among the producing States it would have to induce more of its people to go onto the land by giving them every possible assurance of success. The Minister was most sympathetic. The Government, he assured^ the deputation, wanted to help on the movement towards more farming and better farming, and it would not be niggardly in its assistance., "Something must be done," he said, "to give young men who cannot attend during the day the benefit of night lectures, especially in veterinary and agricultural science, and I will see that it is done." , Tho telton Times" is of opinion that "there is a lesson here for our own educational authorities. Mr Lowrie has been doing splendid work at the Agricultural College, and further afield when the opportunity occurred; but there is Toom in the country for a dozen such men, and it is a great pity that the only one wo have discovered should have been tempted away by our rivals. New Zealand has always been too ready to part with the best of its servants and its' latest loss threatens to be one of its greatest."