1910] EDITORIAL. 605 



Professor Leake holds that it is not in the interests of most effective 

 work for agriculture or of a proper esprit do corps for the whole 

 institution. Many of the advantages claimed would vanish in actual 

 practice, since the botanists, for example, would have to lie split up 

 and assigned to local problems which would involve their isolation. 

 Such a centralization of departmentalized research he considers un- 

 suited to the needs of a large section of agricultural investigation. 



Agricultural research is mainly applied, and as agricultural prac- 

 tice is so largely a question of handling plants in relation to soil and 

 climate a large proportion of the problems of agricultural research 

 deal with interrelations, and consequently require local knowledge. 

 Again, in agricultural research probably more than in any other 

 class "the lines of investigation cut across the commonly accepted 

 divisions of science." Hence " in agriculture probably more than any 

 other subject do problems arise which involve combined attack from 

 more than one direction. Such a combined attack involves coopera- 

 tion, and cv^vy effort to develop such cooperation should therefore 

 be made. The desirability for such cooperation is, I think, recog- 

 nized and much has been written and said about it. 



"Cooperation is essentially a growth from within by consent of 

 the concerned parties; it can not from its very nature be the result 

 of an external graft." This is recognized in cooperative movements, 

 in which great care is taken to prevent any trace of external influ- 

 ence creeping in: "and yet between individuals cooperation is ex- 

 pected to develop from mere chance association." While official pro- 

 vision alone will not bring about cooperation, it can help greatly in 

 avoiding "conditions inimical to its devlopment." 



Despite some obvious differences in conditions in India and this 

 country, many of Professor Leake's propositions will be found both 

 pertinent and timely. Here, as elsewhere, research organized on a 

 large and broad scale is a comparatively new thing. For the most 

 part it has been conducted in connection with educational institu- 

 tions. The traditions of " academic freedom " of the individual 

 teacher as regards the subject matter of" his instruction and the ad- 

 ministrative methods developed in the handling of bodies of more or 

 less immature students have undoubtedly had much to do with the 

 ideas and practices prevailing in the organization and administration 

 of research in the modern world. 



In very many lines of scientific research, including agriculture, it 

 is now evident that there is little hope of the solution of certain 

 classes of problems except by the cooperative effort of a number of 

 116338°— No. 7—19 2 



