equipment of
nearly two hundred science laboratories and of about fifty manual
instruction workshops, while the many-sided programme involved in the
movement as a whole is in operation in some four hundred schools
attended by thirty-six thousand pupils.

Nothing can be more gratifying than the unanimous testimony of the
officers of the Department to the increasing practical intelligence and
reasonableness of the numerous Committees responsible for the local
administration of the schemes which the Department has to approve of and
supervise. The demand for visible money's worth has largely given place
to a genuine desire for schemes having a practical educational value for
the industry of the district. County Clare is not generally considered
the most advanced part of Ireland, nor can Kilrush be very far distant
from 'the back of Godspeed'; yet even from that storm-battered outpost
of Irish ideas I was memorialised a year ago to induce the County
Council to pay less attention to the improvement of cattle and more to
the technical education of the peasantry.

Under the heading of direct aids to agriculture, rural industries, and
sea and inland fisheries, there is much important and useful work which
the Department has set in motion, partly by the use of its funds and
partly by suggestion and the organisation of local effort. The most
obvious, popular and easily understood schemes were those directed to
the improvement of live stock. The Department exercised its supervision
and control with the help of advisory committees composed of the best
experts it could get to volunteer advice upon the various classes of
live stock. It is unnecessary to give any details of these schemes. The
Department profited by the experience of, and received considerable
assistance from the Royal Dublin Society, which had for many years
administered a Government grant for the improvement of horses and
cattle. The broad principle adopted by the Department was that its
efforts and its available resources should be devoted rather to
improving the quality, than to increasing the quantity, of the stock in
the country, the latter function being regarded as belonging to the
region of private enterprise.

It is impossible to over-estimate the importance to the country of
having a widespread interest aroused and discussion stimulated on
problems of breeding which affect a trade of vast importance to the
economic standing of the country--a trade which n