nwhile, to bring home to farmers the
advantages of a first-class agricultural education for their sons, and
at the same time to teach these farmers the more practical application
of science to agriculture, the Department decided on a preliminary
period of Itinerant Instruction.

The teacher difficulty, experienced on all sides of our work, was
probably felt more acutely in regard to the specialised teachers of
agriculture than in any other connection. Here it was necessary to take
the young men brought up upon farms and possessed of the normal
qualifications of the Irish practical farmer. We then had to make them
into teachers by adding to their inherited and home-manufactured
capacities a scientific training. In the training of agricultural
teachers the Albert Institute, Glasnevin, has been utilised by the
Department. This school has also been re-organised to meet the new
programme, and it will probably form in future a link between the winter
schools of agriculture and the Royal College of Science in the training
of our agricultural teachers.

Partly by these methods, partly by the temporary engagement of lecturers
on special subjects, and partly by the appointment of trained teachers
from England or Scotland, the system of itinerant instruction has been
brought into operation as fully as could be expected in the time.
Already half the County Committees have been provided with County
instructors, while the remainder have nearly all drafted schemes and
allocated funds for a similar purpose, ready to go to work as soon as
more teachers have been trained.

The Itinerant Instruction scheme, it may be pointed out, besides one
obvious, has another less immediately recognisable purpose. The direct
business of the itinerant instructor is, by the aid of experimental
plots, simple lectures, and demonstrations, to teach the farmers of his
district as much as they can take in without the scientific preparation
in which, as adults who have grown up under the old system of education,
they are still lacking. But he does more than that. He not only conducts
a school for adults, but in the very process of instruction he
necessarily makes them aware of the vital necessity of a school for the
young; and they begin, as parents, to understand and to desire the kind
of instruction in the schools of the country which will prepare their
children to take more advantage of the advanced teaching in agriculture
than they themselves can ever h