the students at the agricultural colleges ultimately seek employment in the agricultural departments, it appears desirable that the principals should continue to be selected, as a rule, from the Agricultural Service. In the event of a suitable officer not being available from this service, the selection of an officer from the Educational Service should be considered. Nothing should be permitted to stand in the way of the selection of the best man available. It should not have been necessary to emphasise this point, but there is reason to believe that considerations of seniority and of administrative convenience have occasionally been given undue weight in the selection for a post which is only second in importance to that of Director of Agriculture. Continuity of administration of a college is so desirable that we are strongly of opinion that a successful principal should be retained in that appointment even if there is a vacancy in the directorship of agriculture which his seniority and other qualifications give him a claim to fill. In such circumstances, he should receive a personal allowance equal to the difference between the salary of the principal and that of the Director of Agriculture. Coimbatore is the only college which at present has a whole-time principal. If the colleges are adequately to fulfil the function we have assigned them, that of acting as a focus of all provincial educational activities in regard to agriculture, we are of opinion that a whole-time principal should be appointed to all of them. The administrative work involved in the charge of institutions of the magnitude of the existing colleges cannot, in our view, be satisfactorily combined with any other duties, more especially if the activities of the colleges expand in the directions we have suggested. The principal will normally exercise full control over the teaching given in the colleges subject to the general supervision of the Director. The extent to which he should exercise control over research work is a matter which we think should be investigated by the Council of Agricultural Research which should lay down general principles governing the subject. AND RESEARCH STAFF. 478. As in the case of the principal, the selection of members both (ii) THE TEACHING of the teaching and research staffs of the agricultural colleges requires to be made with special care. It by no means follows that an officer who has been successful in district work will make a good professor or research worker and we consider that interchange between the administrative and the research and the teaching branches of the agricultural services should ordinarily be restricted to the earlier years of service. We revert to this point in paragraph 553 of our chapter on The Agricultural Services. In existing conditions, candidates are occasionally appointed direct to posts on the college staff but such posts are usually filled by the appointment of officers already in service. We should be glad to see the field of selection widened by the direct appointment of distinguished graduates in science of Indian universities as this would tend to strengthen the association between the universities. and the colleges, the importance of which we have emphasised in our chapter on The Organisation of Agricultural Research. In this connection, we would again instance the example of Rothamsted where the scientific staff is chosen from the best science schools in the United Kingdom and agricultural knowledge is not regarded as an essential qualification. If the recommendation which we have made in regard to the revision of the college curricula is accepted, the teaching staff of most of the colleges, if not of all of them, will require to be strengthened on the economic side and this is a direction in which the universities can render immediate assistance. In making this recommendation, we have not overlooked the consideration that, if the field of selection is widened in the manner we have suggested, this may be regarded by officers at present in service as depriving them of posts to which they may have a claim. We cannot, however, allow this consideration to override the great advantages which we believe will follow from the acceptance of our proposal. In any event, the rapid expansion of agricultural activities which may reasonably be anticipated in the near future should provide existing members of the agricultural services with full compensation elsewhere for the loss, on occasion, of posts on the staff of the agricultural colleges to which they may regard themselves as having legitimate claims. RESEARCH AND 479. We have carefully considered the question whether it is desirable COMBINATION OF that the research activities of the agricultural colleges should be entirely divorced from the teaching work which is carried on at those institutions. The scientific experts we examined were practically unanimous in holding that the combination of research and teaching, within reasonable limits, is beneficial both to research workers and to teachers. The research worker who undertakes a certain amount of teaching is compelled from time to time to review his subject as a whole and is brought into contact with new ideas. The teacher, by engaging in research work, is also prevented from getting into a groove, is kept in touch with the latest developments in his special branch of knowledge, and is enabled to retain a freshness of outlook which cannot fail to prove a source of inspiration to his pupils. No hard and fast rule can be laid down as to the extent to which research workers should undertake teaching or as to the time which the teacher should devote to research. Much must depend upon individual aptitude but there can, in our view, be no doubt that the combination of research with teaching is of mutual benefit to both. In these circumstances, we entirely approve the system under which, at all the agricultural colleges, the heads of sections, while largely engaged in research work, also give instruction in their special subjects, and have associated with them lecturers who, while dealing with most of the routine of instruction, engage also to a limited extent in research work. 480. We have mentioned in Chapter II that, as the result of the Report of the Royal Commission of 1924 on the Superior Civil Services in India, it was decided that no further recruitment should be made to the allIndia services operating in the transferred fields TRAINING OF THE NEW SUPERIOR PROVINCIAL SERVICES. and that the personnel required for those branches of administration should, in future, be recruited by local governments. Recruitment to the Indian Agricultural Service has accordingly ceased but no definite decision has yet been reached in any province as to the manner in which the new superior provincial services which will, in due course, entirely replace the Indian Agricultural Service in the provinces, should be recruited, the qualifications which should be required for candidates seeking to enter it and the salary and other conditions which should be attached to it. We are here concerned only with the qualifications which should be prescribed for the new services and with those only in so far as they can be obtained in India. The question of the recruitment of candidates from outside India or of Indian candidates who have undergone training abroad is dealt with in our chapter on The Agricultural Services. The situation which arises from the decision to cease recruitment for the Indian Agricultural Service has received our most anxious consideration for it is certain that failure to obtain in the future a supply of officers of the calibre of those who, since the reorganisation of 1905, have brought the departments to their present stage of efficiency would not only put an end to further development but would result in the disastrous failure of the organisation which has been built up. Lavish expenditure on buildings and equipment is of no avail unless there is a highly trained staff under adequate direction which can utilise to the best advantage the means thus provided. The agricultural colleges have, since their inception, turned out men who have filled positions in the provincial agricultural services and, in certain cases, in the Indian Agricultural Service with credit. There is every reason to believe that, as general education spreads and as the standard of teaching of pure science in the colleges and universities rises, the calibre of those who pass through the college course will continue to improve. But there can be no doubt that the ordinary degree or diploma course of the agricultural college does not provide an adequate training for direct recruitment to the higher posts in the agricultural departments and that, for candidates for such posts, a further period of post-graduate study is essential. The agricultural colleges are not in a position to provide intensive training of the character required. The number of recruits to the new Superior Provincial Agricultural Service in each province is not likely to exceed two or three annually. It would usually be difficult to fit such a small number of post-graduate students into the ordinary college system. Neither the research nor the teaching staff of the college could give them the individual attention necessary, even where it is in other respects fully qualified to do so. As the scientific side of the universities develops, they may be expected to provide facilities for post-graduate study in pure science but, for the present and for some time to come, we consider that the post-graduate course should ordinarily be taken at Pusa which, in present conditions, is the only institution in India in which facilities for higher instruction in all branches of agricultural science are available. We have discussed this question in relation to Pusa in Chapter III. OPENINGS IN OTHER DEPARTMENTS PASSED LEGES. FOR STUDENTS 481. We have carefully considered the question of the extent to which it is desirable that openings in departments other than the agricultural departments should be provided for passed students from the agricultural THE COL- colleges. We have made plain our view that, in existing conditions, the great majority of the students passing through the colleges will continue to seek public service in the agricultural departments while relatively few of those trained in the colleges will take to the business of farming on their own account. The cost to the State of the education given in agricultural colleges is high and full value cannot be obtained from the expenditure incurred unless the men who pass out of the colleges are active in promoting agricultural development either in the public service or actually on the land. If openings in other departments were held out as inducements to enter agricultural colleges, there would be danger that the best men from these colleges would be attracted to employment other than that connected directly with agriculture. There are, however, distinct advantages arising from the presence of men who possess a knowledge of agriculture and sympathy with the agricultural classes in departments which are, directly or indirectly, connected with the welfare of the rural community such as the revenue, irrigation and co-operative departments. Whilst, therefore, we do not recommend that any preference in regard to appointments other than appointments in the agricultural departments should be given to passed students from the agricultural colleges, we hold that an agricultural degree or diploma should be placed on the same level as a degree in arts or science as a qualification for appointments in such departments as the revenue, irrigation and co-operative departments. In this connection, we cannot but regret that more use has not been made of passed students from the colleges on estates under the courts of wards and on military grass and dairy farms. Such farms provide work for which they should be well suited and, if they had been employed to a greater extent on it, it is probable that the larger landholders would have been stimulated to use them much more freely than they have done in the management of their estates or of their home farms. We consider that the courts of wards should give a full trial to graduates in agriculture as assistant managers and, after sufficient experience, as managers. 482. The lack of facilities for higher agricultural education in the three provinces of north-eastern India has received our close attention. The Agricultural College at Sabour in Bihar, which formerly served the needs of Bihar and Orissa, Bengal and Assam, was closed early in 1923 as it had failed to attract any students from Bihar and Orissa. The present position is, therefore, that neither in that province nor in Bengal or Assam is there any institution which gives instruction in agriculture beyond the elementary stage. If agriculture in Bengal and Bihar and Orissa is to undergo that intensification which we regard as the only practical means of raising the standard of living of the teeming population of those provinces, if Assam is to develop to the full the great agricultural potentialities of its thinly peopled districts, it is essential HIGHER AGRICUL TURAL EDUCATION IN BENGAL, BIHAR AND that the provincial agricultural departments should possess a properly trained agricultural staff. There are two ways in which this staff could be obtained. One is by the employment of graduates from the agricultural colleges of other provinces who have been given a period of subsequent training, in the areas in which they are to work, sufficient thoroughly to familiarise them with the local conditions. The other is by the establishment of one or more agricultural colleges. We are strongly of opinion that the latter alternative is the one which should be adopted, for a student who has received all his training in the tract in which his agricultural career will be spent should prove far more useful than one who has received most of it in some other part of India. In Bengal, proposals have for some time been under consideration for the establishment of an agricultural institute at Dacca. The selection of Dacca as the site for the institute appeared to us a suitable one as there are advantages in locating it at a centre which already possesses not only a residential university giving a training in pure science but also a large farm which can provide the facilities required for practical training. We were informed by the Director of Agriculture, Bengal, that it was proposed that the students admitted to the institute should be preferably of agricultural parentage and that they should have received a training in pure science up to the standard of the examination in intermediate science. Accepted candidates would first receive another year's special tuition at Dacca University in pure science including physics, chemistry and botany after which they would spend two years at the institute undergoing an almost entirely practical course. The proposed course would thus be of three years' duration and, in these circumstances, we see no reason why it should not follow much the same general lines as those we have suggested for the existing agricultural colleges. We understand that, owing to financial stringency, it has been decided not to proceed for the present with this scheme. We cannot but think that the postponement of provision in Bengal for higher agricultural education is much to be regretted. It is our considered opinion that the provision of a centre for higher agricultural education is essential to the development, on sound lines, of the activities of the Agricultural Department in that province. We, therefore, recommend that an agricultural college should be established at Dacca and that the suggestions we have made in the preceding paragraphs should apply equally to such a college. We consider it most desirable that the miscellaneous short courses discussed in paragraph 474 should be given at this college but the question whether a short course of two years' duration on the lines of that at Cawnpore, Lyallpur and Nagpur should also be instituted should, in our view, be decided in the light of the probable local demand for it. We desire also, in this connection, to refer to the recommendations of the Calcutta University Commission in regard to agricultural teaching in the University of Calcutta. The Commission recommended "that there |