‘ PART IT 
among Africans than a system merely of central schools at which 
agriculture was taught. He believed that the cost of training in that. 
way was cheaper than in agricultural schools. Incidentally, 
instructors were produced who went out amongst the people and 
taught them. The work of the teachers was inspected by agricultural 
officers, assisting the Education Department. 
Mr. WORTLEY said that very little had been done to introduce 
agricultural ' education into Nyasaland. Up to the present, the 
education had been purely in the hands of the missions, with the aid 
of a small subsidy from the Government. A Director of Education 
had recently been appointed, and he felt that a strong Agricultural 
bias would soon be given to native education. 
THE CHAIRMAN (Mr. Holm) stated that very soon after his 
arrival in Kenya he came to the conclusion that, in order to promote 
native agriculture, the training of Africans in agriculture was 
fundamental to the progress of the work. He considered that a mass 
effort of the kind required could not be carried out satisfactorily 
uniess there was behind it a considerable number of trained African 
instructors; it was for this reason that the Kenya Government had 
started native agricultural schools, such as they were. They were 
presented with the difficulty that they could not secure as pupils boys 
who had had an elementary education, and they were forced to start by 
giving the pupils a certain amount of elementary education. At the 
same time those pupils had the whole of the work of the institution to 
per'orm. They saw how different crops should be cultivated and 
managed and harvested, and, finally, disposed of. The primary object 
of these agricultural schools was to supply, in the course of time, the 
Agricultural Department with a number of qualified agricultural 
instructors; at the same time, it was intended also to turn out Africans 
who would be competent to teach agriculture in a suitable elementary 
manner in the native village schools and to take charge of the school 
gardens attached thereto. Experience elsewhere had proved that the 
effort would be a failure if somebody, who was not an agriculturist, 
attempted to teach agriculture. In Kenya, they had further in their 
minds, in connection with the general scheme of organisation, that the 
native agricultural schools situated in the native reserves (of 
which they hoped to have three) would supply a central 
school at the Scott Agricultural Laboratory with the most 
promising pupils, to whom would be given an additional training in 
agriculture and elementary agricultural science. From those pupils 
they hoped to get for the Department a staff of competent agricultural 
instructors. The effort, he thought, had so far been successful; and, 
though not fully trained, they had in the Colony about forty instructors 
who had already passed through their schools and had attained a fair 
degree of efficiency. Part of the organisation was that the instructors 
should be located at centres in charge of demonstration plots on 
shambas which would serve as useful object lessons to the neighbouring 
native cultivators. 
Mr. VAN DEN ABEELE said that in the last few years the 
Belgian Congo Agricultural Department had made a very great effort 
in regard to native agricultural education. In the different Govern- 
ment plantations experiments were carried out in connection with 
coffee, cocoa, oil palm, rubber, and cotton growing; and a great 
number of native teachers were trained in a most practical way in the 
best methods of cultivation. After one or two vears. these teachers 
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