xxxiv Presidential Address. 



great results would follow. Something has already been done by the Civil 

 Service Commissioners in insisting that the cadets in the scientific Depart- 

 ments shall attend University classes at the expense of the State, and that 

 their grading shall to some extent be influenced by the progress which they 

 show in their University work. Some of these men are already showing 

 great promise of becoming investigators, and I do not doubt that the 

 system will give great opportunities to many cadets who would otherwise 

 have little chance of securing a sound scientific education. One great 

 advantage of the system is that, since these young men are mostly taking 

 the full B.Sc. course, which involves the study of four sciences and the 

 acquisition of a reading knowledge of at least one foreign language, they are 

 obtaining a far greater breadth of outlook than could otherwise be the case. 



Science during the last two hundred years has revolutionized the state 

 of our knowledge. It has contributed more than any other factor to our 

 material wealth. It has shown us the nature of disease, and has placed in 

 our hands in large measure the means whereby disease can be combated. 

 The scientific discoveries of Mendel are of far-reaching importance. They 

 have widened our ideas of the origin of species, and their practical appli- 

 cations have produced results of great value to agriculture. Dalton's 

 introduction of the chemical, in contradistinction to the metaphysical, 

 conception of the atom formed the basis upon which the magnificent edifice 

 of nineteenth-century science was based. The idea of a spatial arrangement 

 of atoms hinted at by Wollaston and formally enunciated by Le Bel and 

 Van't Hoff as an outcome of Pasteur's researches on asymmetry opened up a 

 new science of stereo-chemistry, the importance of which to modern physi- 

 ology is becoming daily more apparent. The new sciences of radio-chemistry 

 and physics have shown, through the work of Bragg and Rutherford, not 

 only how the atoms are arranged in crystalline substances, but also the 

 structure of the atoms themselves. Can we doubt that the practical out- 

 come of these investigations will be a harvest as important as that which 

 followed the implanting of the Daltonian idea ? The application of mathe- 

 matics to the simple electrical ideas of Faraday has opened to us, through 

 Clerk Maxwell and his successors, an almost limitless field of work for 

 the physicist and electrical technologist, and wireless telegraphy is but 

 one outcome of Maxwell's conceptions. 



The race for the future must be largely a race for the acquisition from 

 nature of her many secrets. Are Ave in this country to take our fair share 

 in the work, or shall we wait for it to be done elsewhere, in the hope that 

 we may benefit by the labours of other nations, without ourselves taking 

 part in the necessary sacrifice ? If this latter niggardly attitude is to be 

 assumed, we must, as a nation, expect to sink into obscurity. New Zea- 

 land's problems should be attacked by New-Zealanders, and the work must 

 be carried out in New Zealand and not in other countries. I emphasize 

 this point, for the absurd view has been put forward that our scientific 

 problems should be attacked for us by non-resident scientists. Such men 

 could have little understanding of the nature and environment of our diffi- 

 culties compared with that which would inspire our own investigators. 

 Their results could not appeal to us in the same way as research carried 

 out in our own forests, fields, and laboratories. Questions occasionally 

 arise for the answering of which the help of outside specialists must be 

 called, but this is no argument in favour of refusing to adopt a self-reliant 

 policy and to undertake the solution of our own problems. In no spirit 

 of narrowness I appeal for active support and sympathy on behalf of the 

 scientific workers of New Zealand, knowing well that national progress will 

 be influenced deeply by the extent to which this sympathy and support 

 are given or withheld. 



