314 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Public bodies distributed throughout this country and our possessions 

 are organizing various enterprises with that object. Agricultural re- 

 search is now everywhere admitted a proper subject for university sup- 

 port and direction. 



With the institution of the development grant a national subsidy 

 is provided on a considerable scale in England for the first time. 



At such a moment the scope of this applied science and the condi- 

 tions under which it may most successfully be advanced are prominent 

 matters of consideration in the minds of most of us. We hope great 

 things from these new ventures. We are, however, by no means the 

 first to embark upon them. Many of the other great nations have al- 

 ready made enormous efforts in the same direction. We have their 

 experience for a guide. 



Now, it is not in dispute that wherever agricultural science has 

 been properly organized valuable results have been attained, some of 

 very high importance indeed; yet with full appreciation of these 

 achievements, it is possible to ask whether the whole outcome might not 

 have been greater still. In the course of recent years I have come a good 

 deal into contact with those who in various countries are taking part 

 in such work, and I have been struck with the unanimity that they have 

 shown in their comments on the conditions imposed upon them. Those 

 who receive large numbers of agriculture bulletins purporting to give 

 the results of practical trials and researches will, I feel sure, agree with 

 me that with certain notable exceptions they form on the whole dull 

 reading. True they are in many cases written for farmers and growers 

 in special districts, rather than for the general scientific reader, but I 

 have sometimes asked myself whether those farmers get much more out 

 of this literature than I do. I doubt it greatly. Nevertheless, to the 

 production of these things much labor and expense have been devoted. 

 I am sure, and I believe that most of those engaged in these produc- 

 tions themselves feel, that the effort might have been much better 

 applied elsewhere. Work of this unnecessary kind is done, of course, to 

 satisfy a public opinion which is supposed to demand rapid returns for 

 outlay, and to prefer immediate apparent results, however trivial, to 

 the long delay which is the almost inevitable accompaniment of any 

 serious production. For my own part, I greatly doubt whether in this 

 estimate present public opinion has been rightly gauged. Enlighten- 

 ment as to the objects, methods and conditions of scientific research 

 is proceeding at a rapid rate. I am quite sure, for example, that no 

 organization of agricultural research now to be inaugurated under the 

 Development Commission will be subjected to the conditions laid down 

 in 1887 when the experimental stations of the United States were es- 

 tablished. From them it is decreed in Sec. 4 of the Act of Estab- 

 lishment : 



