not learn on their father's farm. Certainly the FarmInstitute classes for the farmer's wife and daughter have raised the standard of dairy produce and brought home to the farmer the benefits of milk-recording, the proper cultivation of an orchard, and the improvement of his mongrel poultry. At the winter classes the farmer is taught to grasp some of the problems of crop-rotation, choice of seeds, relative value of manures, catch-cropping, animal and soil nutrition, and elementary book-keeping. Some Institutes are fortunate enough to possess a farm, or have permission to try experiments on part of a farm belonging to some enthusiast who is interested in the result of new developments; and there is nothing like actuality in this kind of appeal.

The farmer has responded to the Institute. If he be young and progressive, he is not ashamed to attend the courses; but, even if he be too old or believes, as so many do, that he has already taken all agricultural knowledge to be his province so far as his own holding is concerned, he is still content that his son should master the 'new-fangled notions.' Consequently, many of the Institutes are working to capacity or even over. The trouble is that the farmer, while doing his best for his own, does nothing for the children of the agricultural labourer. One cannot blame Sir Daniel Hall if the worker's child is not so much as mentioned in his lengthy Report; but State neglect of the farm-worker's interests is reprehensible. There is not even the excuse that nothing can be done. Thanks to the Board of Education, a small beginning has been made by the establishment of four secondary schools with a rural bias. They are at Welshpool, Knaresborough, Lavington, and Blackford by Wedmore (Somersetshire). Here boys and girls, who have mastered the elements of education, are taught the beginnings of horticultural and agricultural theory and practice. Such secondary schools should be found in every agricultural county; and, if they were conducted wisely, the rising generation would send thousands of trained and sturdy workers to the lands, many of them content to work a small holding intensively, and by so doing to increase the national food supply and raise the national standard of health.

A promise has been made that a part of the grant

of 850,000l. referred to already shall go to the farmworker, who forms the hardest-working and worsttreated class of the population. The nation which, by subscribing to the perilous policy of enclosure, reduced the land-labourer to serfdom a century or more ago, and has in the last few months abolished the Agricultural Wages Board, should seek to make some amends. There is not much to be done to advance the condition or prospects of the middle-aged or elderly farm-hand, but a new world may be prepared for his children, merely by affording them some of the educational privileges which eleven colleges and a dozen Agricultural Institutes confer upon others.

It may be urged further that agricultural education does not give sufficient help to women. There is no agricultural college reserved for women and supported by public funds; and the chief horticultural college (Swanley in Kent) receives only an inadequate grant from the Ministry. In the face of figures provided by the Census, efforts should be made to open still further for women the healthiest and most useful of pursuits. The war showed how well women are able to carry out the work of farm and garden. Already one may find farms and small holdings conducted successfully by women in partnership; and all who have personal experience will testify to the truth that, where the care of live-stock is concerned, women are kinder, more observant, and, generally speaking, more conscientious than men.

Nearly a dozen years have passed since the Development Commissioners promulgated their plans for agricultural research; and the value of these plans is recognised throughout England to-day. The underlying principle is research by subjects. Institutes have been established, and their directors meet on a Research Council, where they discuss and co-ordinate their respective schemes. The Council has been able to lend the weight of a united opinion to plans that call for official aid; but it is worth remembering that the means for research are controlled by the Development Commissioners, though the Ministry of Agriculture is the administrative body. It has been found not only Vol. 288.-No. 472.

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necessary but possible to pay workers at the Institutes an adequate salary, ranging from 300l. to 8001. a year, while the Directors themselves receive rather more. In order of practical importance the Research Institutes may be set down as follows: Rothamsted (which is the pioneer establishment), Cambridge University, University College (Aberystwyth), Bristol University (Long Ashton with East Malling Fruit Station and Chipping Campden in connexion), Oxford University, the Reading Institute of Dairying, the Royal Veterinary College and the Ministry's Laboratory at New Haw (Weybridge), the Imperial College of Science and Technology, the University of Leeds, the Midland Agricultural College, Armstrong College, the University College of Bangor, and the Waltham Cross Experimental Station. These Institutes deal with ten subjects-Plant Pathology and Physiology, Breeding and Nutrition, with the soilproblems in connexion with the last, Fruit-growing, Animal Nutrition and Pathology, Dairying, Agricultural Zoology, and Agricultural Economics.

Perhaps the most important work is carried out by Rothamsted and Cambridge University; certainly more ground is covered by these two homes of learning than by any two of the others. Rothamsted, under the energetic direction of Dr Russell, takes for its province the wide domain of soil cultivation and the use of fertilisers. Here one finds the plot on which for upwards of half a century wheat has been grown every year; here, too, we find a range of laboratories, completed since the war began, that are second to none in the world. The study of mycology at Kew, the entomological work of Manchester University, and the helminthological work of Birmingham University, have been brought to the great station at Harpenden so as to build up a study of plant pathology as a whole in connexion with the study of nutrition and environment. There is no need to go into detail about the work-indeed none but a professed scientist is qualified to do so-but from time to time the practical results are published. It may be added, not without regret, that from time to time details of experiments that can appeal only to the highlyinitiated minority find their way to the long-suffering Journal of the Ministry of Agriculture, where they

possibly help to account for the fact that so many farmers and small-holders fail to support that eminently respectable publication.

The Agricultural Research work Research work at Cambridge University, though still in the experimental stage, appeals more powerfully to the public imagination. The problem of animal nutrition involves vast sums of money; and an attempt is being made to determine the precise point at which feeding ceases to be economicalin other words, the shortest period at which the carefullybalanced ration will show the maximum effect. The work is costly; and it is felt, quite rightly, that the industry should bear a part of the burden, since it stands to receive the whole of the benefit. Passing reference may be made to the researches of Prof. Punnett, who is studying the production of the best kinds of rabbits with a view to establishing breeds with the close textured fur that may enable the furrier to dispense in large measure with costly imported furs. Prof. Punnett's researches into the Mendelian breeding of poultry are also likely to be of great value to the industry; important results have been achieved already. Perhaps one of the most remarkable figures in the world of Agricultural Research is Prof. Biffen (of Cambridge), who before the war had established the main principles of inheritance in wheat, and has enriched the world with some famous varieties, 'Little Joss,' 'Burgoyne's Fife,'' Fenman,' 'Yeoman,' and others. There was a time when English soil averaged a five-bushels yield of wheat to the acre. Our general average to-day is about thirty-two; the fine summer of 1921 has raised it to a marked degree; but Prof. Biffen can claim that one of the varieties he has produced has actually yielded 96 bushels, though this wonderful result is only obtainable on specially suitable soils and under the most favourable conditions.

The part which wheat plays in the world is so great that it is a matter of satisfaction to find a book that may be said to be worthy the first of all the cereals. Mr John Percival, the author of 'The Wheat Plant: A Monograph' (Duckworth), deals with his subject in a fashion that will probably keep other pens for many years to come from a subject that he may be said to have exhausted. He examines in turn structure, colour,

germination, morphology, and anatomy of roots and leaves, the questions of tillering, shooting, and lodging, and the whole progress of plant development. He then tells us of the origins of wheat, of spelt and emmer, Egyptian Cone and common bread-wheat, and the relationship of the various wheat races. He has also a convincing chapter on the improvement and breeding of wheat.

At the outset wheat was no more than a wild grass, and some authorities believe that this grass may still be found in the mountainous country of Mesopotamia. Today so widely has the wheat-eating habit spread that there is only one country in Europe and Asia (Siam) in which wheat is not planted; and in every month of the year wheat comes to harvest in some part of the Globe. Varieties of wheat are endless, and bread-wheat is among the most ancient of cereals. When we come to consider how the expansion of humanity in all directions is measured by the food-supply, we see how far that supply is interpreted in terms of wheat. It is clear enough that this simple grain is one of the greatest factors in world-history, and it is reassuring indeed to learn that modern science promises to provide us with wheats of greater productivity and greater resistance to natural enemies. Work on wheat-breeding is at present in its infancy, but the future holds no more important problem for us than this which is being examined by a few devoted men who are known to the outside world only by the results they achieve. Mr Percival's monograph, the result of twenty years' study, is a book of the very first importance, more interesting than many a romance, and one that no serious student, either of agriculture or the world-problems that depend upon it, can afford to neglect.

The necessity of obtaining some support for research from farmers, either directly or indirectly, has led of late to the establishment of the National Institute of Agricultural Botany, endowed by Sir Robert McAlphine and others, including members of the seed and milling trades who, in popular parlance, have been 'coining money' during the past few years and have taken far more of the profits of farming and far less of the risks than have fallen to the farmer himself. The Institute