Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 56.djvu/246

232 In Uraguay exist fine schools for teaching agriculture and viticulture which are of recent organization. At Montevideo the Government has created a Department of Live Stock and Agriculture, subject to the Home Ministry. The budget of 1897 provides for organizing and sustaining agricultural schools and experiment farms to the extent of $28,222, with an additional allowance of $90,000 for experiments on farms, installation of plants, furniture, instruments, etc.

Chili is coming to the front in her educational efforts. In the city of Concepción exists a Practical School of Agriculture. Others are found at Santiago, at Talca, San Fernando, Elqui, and Salamanca. The school at Santiago receives an annual subvention of $40,000, and that at Concepción the sum of $23,000. Attached to the latter are agronomic stations for soil analysis and oversight of irrigation systems of the state. The Sociedad Nacional de Agricultur at Santiago receives an annual grant of $20,000, which it distributes at agricultural shows and for the support of the zoölogical garden. At Quintan Normal is also an Institute Agricola of high grade for agricultural engineers and agronomics, or for furnishing a simple certificate in agriculture.

Other countries of South America possess education facilities, but we are not supplied with details concerning them.

Our closing glance must be directed to the far Orient. Japan, the newest of kingdoms, has a model brace of institutions for superior education in agriculture. When Japan awoke to the new ideas, to which for ages she was oblivious, her keenest statesmen grasped the thought that her agricultural people needed new light and intellectual quickening along the lines which so vitally affected their daily subsistence. She took the United States into her confidence. She imported for a season our Commissioner of Agriculture (General Capron), in 1871-'72, as "Adviser to the Colonial Office at Hokaido," who, after visiting Japan, advised the Government to organize at once an agricultural college at Sapporo, and still another at Tokio. This advice was cordially received and speedily adopted. American scholars of the highest wisdom and experience were imported to inaugurate the work. The college was inaugurated by Colonel W. S. Clark, LL. D., President of Amherst Agricultural College, in August, 1876, with twenty-four students. Its new location was Sapporo, and its new name was the Sapporo Agricultural College. The Government dealt liberally in grants of land, but these ample acres have since been mostly confiscated, leaving only sufficient for educational purposes. Few can estimate the wonderful uplift which has come to Japan through this efficient school. In 1893 it had sent out from its agricultural