AGRICULTURAL TEACHING.
The Place of Rural Economy in a University Curriculum. By Professor William Somerville. (Clarendon Press. 1s. net.)— There are several interesting points in this lecture of the Sibthorpian Professor. He shows, for instance, that there is still a demand in excess of the supply of agricultural lecturers and investigators for posts at home and in the Colonies. It seems that there are now about fifteen hundred students at the Agri- cultural Colleges of this country, and that the number of persons reached by peripatetic instruction is thirty-two thousand five hundred. Professor Somerville, who was formerly in charge of the Education Department at the Board of Agriculture, notes
i the new attitude to the teaching of agricultural science. " It is now," he says, "some years since I heard of any active opposition on the part of farmers to the provision of technical education in their calling." The author would like Oxford men to have a greater share in the work of agricultural science teaching than they have at present, and suggests how this desirable state of things might be brought about. It is incidentally mentioned in this lecture, what is by no means generally known, that Sir Hnmphry Davy first anticipated the discovery, for which credit has been given to the Germans, that leguminous plants are able to take nitrogen from the air.
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