It will be seen that the means of obtaining exact time involve a very considerable outlay, and that the services of highly trained men are needed. The public is thus greatly indebted to the railroads, telephone companies, and other corporations which usually bear the expense of securing standard time. It is probable, however, that from motives of scientific pride no observatory would undertake to charge for this anything like what would be exacted for such rare service in any department of the commercial world.
It is worth while to note that even with such perfect clocks and favorable conditions it is still impossible to secure perfect timekeeping. Add to this the fact that it is not usual for those who send out the time, after it has been received from the observatory, to pay much heed to variations, even of several seconds, in their master clocks, and we see why it is a disheartening task to keep the best watch as near the second as the owner would fain have it. In the first place, the watch could hardly be made to keep such time if kept still in an unchanging temperature; secondly, it is still less capable of it when subjected to the jolting and changes of temperature it encounters when carried; and, thirdly, the means of obtaining time with sufficient exactitude are rarely available to the general public.
AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES.
By W. E. DE RIEMER, M. A.
The recent death, at the closing of the year 1898, of the lamented Senator Justin S. Morrill, who, as being the author of the Land-Grant College Act, is justly styled the father of agricultural education in the United States, seems to suggest the desirability of taking a survey of agricultural education as it at present exists in other countries than our own.
Since the pursuit of agriculture is one which concerns more of the people of our globe than any other pursuit, the necessity for scientific training for agriculturists becomes more and more evident to educated people. It is true that the cultivators of the soil do not generally admit the need of special schooling. At the beginning of this century very few educators, even, thought so. It was supposed that tilling the soil had nothing to do with schools, and that science had no connection with plowing and sowing. Agricultural lectureships were established early in the eighteenth century in several European universities, but they were regarded as curiosities of the age—superfluities of culture, rather than aids to the cultivator. Farmers themselves were supposed to be the only competent teachers of agriculture, and experience the only possible guide. But it has become apparent that no farmer's experience is broad enough to be adapted to all soils and climates. The successful farmer has come to regard the land which he owns as a wonderful machine which, if rightly managed, will turn out the most costly and perfect product; but which, if neglected or ignorantly handled, will disappoint his high hopes and possibly impoverish its owner. The development of commerce which so easily introduces the wheat and potatoes and other products of our country into competition with the grain produced in a distant land has taught the producers of this generation, and especially the citizen of European countries, that the farmer who can produce the largest crop of grain from the fewest acres, at the lowest price for the best cereal or vegetable, is the only successful cultivator. The nation which succeeds best in this direction with all its soil products is the one which is sure to have the "balance of trade" always in its favor.
The United States awoke to this idea when, in 1862, Congress passed the Land-Grant College Act, allotting Government lands in every State to aid in founding agricultural colleges. The country became more profoundly moved by this idea when, in 1887, Congress passed the Hatch Act, granting annually to each State the sum of fifteen thousand dollars to organize and perpetuate agricultural experiment stations, and still further when it organized a Department of Experiment Stations as an integral part of the Department of Agriculture.
But several of the countries of Europe have anticipated our action in behalf of agricultural education by a quarter of a century. Germany and France and little Switzerland realized fifty years ago that agriculture in its various departments must be pursued with the aid of the latest science combined with the broadest experience. These countries have not waited for the laborer to perfect himself in experience—an impossible attainment—but they have opened schools of every possible grade, arranged courses of lectures by the best educated scientists, made elementary agriculture a compulsory subject in the curricula of the common schools, sent out traveling instructors to confer with and advise and give courses of lectures to the older farmers, made it possible—even compulsory—that young people should attend technical schools at odd hours of the day or evening, and even tempted them to pass a serious examination in their respective studies by the offer of a valuable prize as the reward of success. It is said that Charles Dickens once made a speech at an agricultural dinner in which he somewhat derisively said that "the field it paid the farmer best to cultivate was the one within the ring fence of his own skull." Dickens was correct. The farmer needs scientific education. The best civilized and progressive nations of to-day are admitting the utterance of Dickens to be a serious truth. Vast sums of money are appropriated by European governments to prevent their agricultural classes from continuing in or subsiding into ignorance of their art. Even the peasants of Russia, notably in the province of Ekaterinoslav, by the generous appliances for special agricultural education made by the Ministry of Agriculture and State Domains, united with the efforts of the Ministry of Public Instruction, are made to feel that without expert teaching a man can not succeed even in the raising of fowls or of bees, the culture of silkworms, the making of wine, or the manuring of his fields. Consul Heenan[20] says that in the province named above the Government annually rents thirty-two experiment fields, each eight acres in extent, distributed four in each district, and each one located in the midst of peasant fields. Each of these fields is placed in charge of some scientifically educated public-school teacher, who is paid twenty-five dollars per year for his direction, and receives, besides, all the harvest produced. The teacher uses the native tools and seeds, and hires neighbor peasants to assist in demonstrating that with care in plowing, cleaning of seed, cultivating, and reaping, his field will produce larger crops than his slovenly or ignorant neighbor. The object lesson has its certain result. The peasants are gradually adopting the four-field culture system—viz., fallow, winter crops, pastures, and summer crops.