and other growers combat fungi, whilst Theobald advised those confronting crop pests. Their colleagues dealt with all manner of technical requirements, even designing an innovative aerating sewage treatment plant for nearby Olantigh. Complementing individual consultations and publications, college staff toured the south-east of England giving lectures to agricultural or rural organisations on "fruit growing, farriery, poultry, bee keeping, and numerous veterinary topics", sometimes in migratory vans specially prepared for these roadshows. In Wye they regularly gave talks to the village school, and the laboratories offered a service analysing soil, forage and milk, and performing veterinary post-mortems. At the end of its first year of operation Wye's College had cost Kent and Surrey county councils £25,000 split 3:2 in their agreed proportions. The two counties combined technical education budget at the time was only £37,000 per year. In addition to their normal annual contributions the counties had to make exceptional 1895 payments to cover their college's deficit and stringent cost cutting was enforced in place of the earlier largess. Grants from the Board of Agriculture and those changes put the college back onto a sound financial footing ready for further premises expansion. Going forward, and particularly following 1910's Liberal government policy for expansion of agriculture and establishment of the Development Fund, this financial burden on the councils diminished, falling to only £3,000 by 1925. Indeed, itinerant agriculture lecturer Hall left Rothamsted in 1912 to become one of eight commissioners to the Development Fund. The college would be able to seek annual grants from successive central government agriculture or education departments by presenting itself alternately as an agricultural institution or university respectively. The South Eastern Agricultural College at Wye immediately took advantage of the University of London Act 1898 and became one of its federated schools with such privileges as it would have had if situated within the administrative county of London. Even in formal documents it was also referred to as Wye College at the time. From 1894, students seeking a three year qualification completed the college's two year diploma and were then prepared a further year for examination by the Royal Agricultural Society of England, the Surveyors' Institution or by Cambridge University. The arrangement was reversed for the new London University Bachelor of Science degree. Students could take first year basic science courses anywhere in the university's Faculty of Science and the latter years provided specialist teaching such as agricultural