for admission to the stock improvement schemes.  Probably an equal number of breeding animals offered for inspection have been rejected.  Many a cause celebre has not unnaturally arisen over the decisions of the equestrian tribunal, and there have not been wanting threats that the attention of Parliament should be called to the gross partiality of the Department which has cast a reflection upon the form of stallion A or upon the constitutional soundness of stallion B. On the whole, as far as I can gather, the best authorities in the country are agreed that since the Department has been at work there has been established a higher standard of excellence in the bucolic mind as regards that vastly important national asset, our flocks and herds.

Again for details I must refer the reader to official documents.  There he will find as much information as he can digest about the vast variety of agricultural activities which originate sometimes with the Department’s officers or with its Journal and leaflets, the circulation of which has no longer to be stimulated from our Statistics and Intelligence bureau, and sometimes emanate from the local committees, whose growing interest in the work naturally leads to the discovery of fresh needs and hitherto unthought of possibilities of agricultural and industrial improvement.  I may, however, indicate a few of the subjects which have been gone into even in these years while the new Department has been trying so far as it might, without sacrifice of efficiency and sound economic principle, to keep pace with the feverish anxiety of a genuinely interested people to get to work upon schemes which they believe to be practical, sound, and of permanent utility.

A question which has troubled administrators of State aid to every progressive agricultural community, and which each country must settle for itself, is by what form of object lesson in ordinary agriculture intelligent local interest can best be aroused We have advocated widely diffused small experimental plots, and they have done much good.  Probably the most useful of our crop improvement schemes have been those which have demonstrated the profitableness of artificial manures, the use of which has been enormously increased.  The profits derivable in many parts of Ireland from the cultivation of early potatoes has been demonstrated in the most convincing manner.  To what may be called the industrial crops, notably flax and barley, a great deal of time and thought has been applied and much information disseminated and illustrated by practical experiments.  In many quarters interest has been aroused in the possibilities of profitable tobacco culture.  Many negative and some positive results have been attained by the Department in the as yet incomplete experiments upon this crop.  Much has been learned about the functions of central and local agricultural and small industry shows, those occasional aids to the year’s work which disseminate knowledge and stimulate interest and friendly rivalry among the different producers.  The reduction in the death-rate among young stock, due to preventible causes such as white scour and blackleg, is well worthy of the attention of those who wish to study the more practical work of the Department.