Science has been re-organised. Although this institution was brought
under the new conditions little more than three years ago, it will be
seen that no time has been lost when I state that the first batch of men
who have received a three years' course of training under the new
programme are already at work under County Committees. For the training
of these teachers, scholarships had to be provided, and new professors
and teachers, particularly in agriculture, had to be appointed.

In regard to agricultural instruction we had to begin by carefully
considering what, among many alternative plans, should be our immediate
as well as our more remote aims. The Department's officers had studied
Continental systems, and some of them had taken part in establishing
systems of agricultural education in Great Britain. But it was not until
the summer of 1901 that we had sufficiently studied the question in
Ireland itself, with direct reference to the history, the environment,
and the ideals of the people, to justify us in initiating a policy or
formulating a definite programme for its execution.[50] The main object
was to secure for the youth of the present generation who will later be
concerned with agriculture, sound and thorough instruction in its
principles and practice. Everyone who has given any thought to the
subject knows how difficult it is to teach technical agriculture unless
provision has been made in the general education of the country for
instruction in those fundamental principles of science which, recognised
or unrecognised, lie at the root of, and profoundly influence
agricultural practice. This foundation, as I have shown, is now being
laid in Ireland. In our scheme the boy who has managed to avail himself
of a two or three years' course of practical science in one of the
secondary schools is then prepared to take full advantage of courses of
technology, and will have to make up his mind as to the career he is to
follow. We are now considering the case of a boy who is going to become
a farmer, the class to which we chiefly look for the future well-being
of Ireland. It is necessary that he should be taught the practical as
well as the technical side of agriculture. The practical work he can
learn upon his father's farm during spring and summer, and the technical
by continuing his studies during the winter months in a school of
agriculture. The establishment of such winter schools is in
contemplation. But, in the mea