3 2 4 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



Thus in Ceylon, while the work done at the Experiment 

 Stations and elsewhere in the department is strictly scientific in 

 regard to accuracy and method, the researches undertaken have 

 always been such as afforded a reasonable prospect of some 

 directly practical return within a moderate time. The results 

 have been strikingly successful upon the whole, and the public 

 have now acquired such a faith in the institution that there is 

 comparatively little criticism of its work, and no repining, or 

 attacks upon the conduct of the place, if work is undertaken 

 which may require many years to yield a result. This is as it 

 should be ; there is too much tendency among a certain class of 

 scientific workers to regard work as of greater value the less it 

 is applicable to the needs of practical life. 



So far mention has only been made of the official institutions 

 for the carrying on of scientific work, but the work done by true 

 amateurs in the tropics is now of very slight importance, 

 though in earlier times such people as Champion, Colonel and 

 Mrs. Walker, Ferguson, and others did very valuable work in 

 Ceylon, to take only one country out of the many. Now that 

 there are first-class scientific institutions in the Philippine 

 Islands, in Java, in Ceylon, in the West Indies, and elsewhere, 

 it may be taken for granted that the scientific investigation of 

 the innumerable problems of the tropics will go on much faster 

 than hitherto, and produce great effects in the modification 

 of the hitherto prevailing views in botany, if not in agriculture, 

 which of course is an art of very different application in different 

 climates. 



