The Agricultural and Technical Instruction Act. 377 known as the County Boroughs. The importance of this revolution in Irish local government in regard to the working of the new Department may be gathered from the following extract from the "First Annual Report" of the Department for the year 1900-01 (Cd. 838) :— "The Agriculture and Technical Instruction Act is, so to speak, built into, as well as out of, the system of representative local government established by the legislation of 1898. The Department, paying due regard to this fact, has studied, in administering the Act, and in so far as the nature of its functions permitted, to extend the responsibilities of the local authorities, and it looks forward to having their aid in many ways in strengthening the spirit of economic and social self-help amongst the people generally. The Act contemplates that the six County Boroughs should formulate their own schemes; and the Department desires, in the area outside the County Boroughs as well, to stimulate local initiative in the preparation of schemes of Agriculture and Technical Instruction. It delegates to them, moreover, the local administration of such schemes, and has assisted them to construct a machinery for this administration in the shape of County Committees for Live Stock, and for Agriculture and Technical Instruction, and Urban Committees for Technical Instruction. This, of course, has an educational value of importance, inasmuch as, on the one hand, it gives the Department the benefit of local opinions and experience, and, on the other, it brings the local bodies themselves into contact with the difficulties of the problem to be dealt with. It helps, besides, to produce in the country a sympathetic understanding of the necessarily tedious process by which sound reforms of this kind are accomplished. With a view to rendering its advice more effective and better informed, the Department consider it wise to establish, through their officers, direct and personal relations with the local authorities, societies, schools, and those classes of the people generally with whom their work has to do. It is felt that correspondence alone would be an inadequate means of explaining a new and complicated Act, and of working out highly technical schemes with bodies who are under no obligation to adopt them. The Department have, consequently, in the person of their representatives, been ready to visit every local authority, confer with them on the spot, and aid them with expert advice, after thorough inspection and examination of local conditions. Practically all the County Councils and Urban Councils or Technical Instruction Committees in Ireland have thus been visited by the Department-some of these bodies many times-and many numerous personal conferences have taken place at the offices in Upper Merrion Street between the Department's officers and representatives of local committees." Owing to the organisation of Irish farmers, due to the success of the co-operative movement, and the creation of representative councils in every county, urban and rural district of Ireland, the work of the Department in getting into direct touch with the people on whose behalf it was created was immensely facilitated. Its own peculiar constitution made for the same object. III. The Recess Committee, as we have seen, looked to foreign countries for the models on which to base their suggestions for a Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland. The very nature of the work which the new Department was called into existence to accomplish made it absolutely essential that the Department should keep in touch with the public opinion of the classes whom its work would concern, and without whose active co-operation no lasting good could be effected. The machinery for this purpose was provided by the establishment of a Council of Agriculture and two Boards, one concerned with Agriculture, and the other with Technical Instruction. These representative bodies, whose constitution is interesting as marking a new departure in the administrative system of the United Kingdom, were adapted from Continental models. As the Vice-President said in his opening address at the inaugural meeting of the Council last year :-" Similar Councils to advise and influence similar Departments, have been found by experience in the Continental countries who are Ireland's economic rivals, to be the most valuable of all means whereby the administration keeps in touch with the opinions of the agricultural and industrial classes, and becomes truly responsive to their needs and wishes." The Council of Agriculture is mainly elective, and is built out of the newly established system of local government. It consists of 104 members, of whom sixty-eight are elected by the County Councils, and thirty-four are nominated by the Department. The President and Vice-President of the Department are ex-officio members of the Council and of both Boards. The members of the Council are elected for a term of three years, and according to the Act "shall meet at least once a year for the purpose of discussing matters of public interest in connection with any of the purposes of this Act." Where the Council differs from its foreign prototypes is, mainly, in the great amount of direct power which has been entrusted to it. Besides its advisory powers-and the importance to be attached to the deliberate opinion of such a representative body is naturally very great-the Council itself creates the larger portion of the Agricultural Board, and shares with the County Boroughs the appointment of the majority of members of the Board of Technical Instruction, and to these Boards is entrusted the control of nearly all the funds with which the Department has been endowed. The two Boards consist of fourteen and twenty-three members respectively, of whom two, as already noted, are ex-officio: four are nominated by the Department, and the remainder are appointed either by the Council of Agriculture or directly by the Councils of the County Boroughs and Urban Districts; whilst the Commissioners of National Education and the Intermediate Education Board each send one representative to the Board of Technical Instruction. The members of the Council and of the two Boards are unpaid, and receive only the usual travelling and subsistence allowances when engaged upon their official duties. The Council of Agriculture. 379 In addition to special advisory powers, the two Boards, as was pointed out by Mr. Gerald Balfour, the first President of the Department, occupy precisely the same position in reference to the Department as regards financial matters that the House of Commons holds in reference to the Government of the day. No money can be spent, except as regards a few minor matters,' without their consent. Of the Department's annual income of 166,0007., the sum of 55,000l. is ear-marked for technical instruction. This sum is to be divided into portions, to be determined every three years by the Department, with the concurrence of the Board of Technical Instruction. As regards one portion, the Board's functions then cease. This portion is divided amongst the six County Boroughs, viz., Belfast, Cork, Dublin, Londonderry, Limerick and Waterford, according to their population "in or about the time of distribution," and is applied by the Councils of these boroughs (through a Technical Instruction Committee), as they think fit, to any scheme of technical education which meets with the approval of the Department. The other portion is to be applied for the purposes of technical instruction elsewhere than in the County Boroughs, subject to the concurrence of the Board of Technical Instruction, who thus occupy with regard to this portion the position of the Department in reference to the other portion. A power of veto, is as has been stated, possessed by the Agricultural Board over the expenditure of the greater part of the Department's funds. As already explained, these funds consist of a capital sum of about 200,000l. and an annual income of 166,0007. Of the capital sum, 15,000l. was assigned by the Act to the Royal Veterinary College of Ireland, and 10,000l. was allocated to certain purposes in connection with the development of the Munster Institute. Of the annual income of 166,000l. the sum of 55,0007. is to be devoted to the purposes of technical instruction, and 10,000l. to sea fisheries. The residues, about 175,000l. (capital sum), and 101,0007. (annual sum), are, after meeting the cost of a few minor items, to be devoted by the Department "for the purposes of agriculture and other rural industries or sea fisheries," subject to the concurrence of the Agricultural Board. It may be noted here that it is specifically provided in the Act that none of the funds thus placed at the disposal of the Department are to be spent in congested districts, which are, of course, especially provided for by the Congested Districts Board. To prevent, however, any overlapping of the work of that Board and of the Department, it is provided that the latter may undertake any of the Congested Districts Board's powers and duties at its request, but any expense which is 1 See for these the Agriculture and Technical Instruction (Ireland) Act 1899, Section 16, (1), (a), (b), (c) (i), (d), (e), and (f). incurred in performing these functions must be provided by that Board or from local sources. It was not desired by the members of the Recess Committee, nor is it intended by the Government, that the Department should ever become a body existing merely for the purpose of administering State subsidies; its function was rather in the words of the Vice-President to be that of "helping people to help themselves." Hence the Act expressly prohibits the Department from applying (except in special cases) any of its funds to schemes in respect of which aid is not given out of money provided by a local authority or from other local sources. Accordingly, the Act empowers local authorities to levy a rate of one penny in the pound for the purposes of the Act, and it also provides that, notwithstanding anything in the Technical Instruction Acts, 1889 and 1891, the rate raised for the purposes of those Acts in a rural district may, if the County Council think fit, be applied for any of the purposes of this Act. As regards what I may call the internal organisation of the Department, the different sections of its work have been állotted to a number of separate branches, and each branch is manned by a specially qualified staff, and has at its head an Assistant Secretary or head of branch, who is a highly trained expert or administrator. Each branch is thus in a position to concentrate its entire energy and expert skill upon its special task, as if it were a distinct department in itself, while at the same time its work is brought into harmony with the general purpose of the Act, and gains from having behind it the resources of the whole Department. The machinery for general direction and co-ordination of the work of the branches is provided in the offices of the Vice-President and of the Permanent Secretary. The branches amongst which the Department has so far divided its work are the following: I. Agricultural Branch. II. Technical Instruction Branch. IV. Statistics and Intelligence Branch. With the space at my disposal it would be impossible to give the details of the work of these several branches. The reader will find full particulars in regard to each of them in the Annual Reports of the Department. I may, however, mention here that the work of the Agricultural Branch has so far concerned itself with the following main divisions of its wide field of labour, viz., (a) Improvement of Live Stock, (b) Agricultural Instruction by means of itinerant instructors and pioneer lectures, and (c) Special inquiries and investigations, e.g., into the causes of calf mortality, and the inauguration of experimental and demonstration plots. 4 Upper Merrion Street, Dublin. WILLIAM P. COYNE. ACTION IN HARNESS HORSES. VARIOUS letters and articles which have recently appeared in English and French agricultural papers on action in harness horses indicate that this subject is at present receiving a good deal of attention. Good action, in all its bearings of supply and demand, is constantly before the dealer in high-class harness horses, and its monetary value, at least, is soon impressed upon the intending purchaser of such comparatively scarce and fashionable animals. Whether the breeder as clearly recognises the great importance of the class, and perceives the opportunity before him and how best to realise it, is open to doubt. The demand for good harness horses, with quality and manners, that "step" and "go" is always in excess of the supply, a fact publicly and practically illustrated by the very keen competition and high prices paid by dealers at the various public auctions, whenever horses with the requisite good action and manners are put up for sale. In the breeding of the best type of harness horses with action, the horse breeding agriculturist has therefore within his reach an additional string to his bow, which, if intelligently utilised, should prove a pleasurable and remunerative undertaking. The chief difficulty in the way of success is the few prizes and many blanks that are apt to fall alike to the breeder of the horse with action as to the breeder of all kinds of high-class stock. All good action is hereditary, at least in origin; for although much can be acquired, as is seen in the marked improvement in the action of most horses subjected to judicious and appropriate training, yet, unless the aptitude for action already exists, that is to say, is inherited, no amount of training will give satisfactory results. In a recent article on action the term congenital is employed as synonymous with hereditary, but each conveys a distinct. idea. A congenital defect signifies a condition of the offspring actually present or manifest at birth, whether hereditary or non-hereditary, whereas an hereditary defect signifies a condition transmissible from parent to offspring, which may be either congenital, i.e., manifest at birth, or not congenital, i.e., not manifest till some time after birth. Similarly its full significance is not always given to the term "acquired defect," which should apply not only to conditions contracted at birth and subsequently, but also to those accidentally contracted during intra uterine life. Acquired congenital defects are similar to defects acquired after birth, in that they are not |