PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 



The following is the presidential address delivered before the New Zealand 

 Institute Science Congress, Palmerston North, on the 28th January, 1921, 

 by Thomas Hill Easterfield, M.A., Ph.D., F.I.C., F.N.Z.Inst,, Director of 

 the Cawthron Institute of Scientific Research, and Emeritus Professor in 

 Victoria University College : — 



Ladies and Gentlemen, — Our meeting to-night is saddened by the 

 absence of two of our members whose names are familiar to you all : 

 I allude to the late Sir David Hutchins and Mr. Kenneth Wilson. It 

 was the intention of Sir David Hutchins to read a paper on forestry at 

 this Congress. His whole life had been devoted to the study of forest 

 problems in Africa, India, Australia, and New Zealand, and the fact that 

 our Dominion has at last adopted an active forest policy is in no small 

 measure due to his persistent advocacy of this step. 



Mr. Kenneth Wilson was one of the founders of the Manawatu Philo- 

 sophical Society, and its first President. He was for many years a member 

 of the Board of Governors of the New Zealand Institute. That the present 

 meeting is being held in Palmerston North is largely due to his efforts. 



Addressing, as I am, an audience containing but few with an intimate 

 knowledge of the science which has been my life-study, I decline to weary 

 you by attempting any account of the progress made in chemistry or in 

 any branch of it. I have therefore chosen as the subject of my address 

 k " Some Aspects of Scientific Research." 



At an early stage in the history of the human race man must have 

 learnt that knowledge is the equivalent of power, and that the acquisition 

 of new knowledge is of great importance in the struggle for existence. It 

 is not probable that the idea of systematic experiment was common— 

 indeed, the idea is still foreign to the conception of the average man. 

 It would be natural for the first systematic observations to be made on 

 the apparent movements of the heavenly bodies — the most systematically 

 recurring of all natural phenomena. The fact that the orientation of the 

 starry heights is definite for the seasons of the year could not long have 

 escaped observation, and a practical interest would thus be added to the 

 study of the heavens. It is probable that the arrangement of the constel- 

 lations much in their present order was carried out in Babylonia at least 

 three thousand years before the Christian era. In no other branch of 

 knowledge have early observations of the same degree of exactitude 

 remained on record. 



From many points of view agriculture must be regarded as the most 

 important of human activities, and at a very early stage man must have 

 been faced by the problems of the soil. Experience gained by long- 

 observation must have taught that certain crops will thrive only under 

 certain more or less narrowly defined conditions of soil, season, and climate. 

 How far the early agricultural knowledge was due to chance observation, 

 and how far to direct experiment, we shall never know. Even in the 

 Stone Age much agricultural knowledge had been accumulated, for both 

 wheat and barley occur in those interesting pile dwellings, the remains of 

 the villages of the neolithic lake-dwellers of Switzerland. 



