IRISH GARDENING. 



93 



aspects of trop-procUifiion. The investigator 

 must himself be able to grow his crop to perfec- 

 tion, and it is not too nuich to say that no real 

 progress can be made witliout this. The ordinary 

 agricxiltiiral processes applied to any crop bear 

 a direct relationshij) to the physiological neces- 

 sities of the plant and have been evolved from 

 centuries of traditional experience. In all inves- 

 tigations on crops, a lirst-hand knowledge of 

 practice is necessary, and nowhere is it so impor- 

 tant as in plant-breeding work where practice is 

 quite as valuable as an acquaintance with the 

 methods and results of genetics. The greatest 

 devotion to the study of inheritance, using for 

 this i)urpose material indifferently grown, is 

 largely labour lost, as many characters are 

 masked unless the plants are really thriving and, 

 well developed. For instance, in wheat, the red 

 colour of the chaff never develops in badly grown 

 plants, thereby causing great confusion in 

 systematic and breeding work on this crop. In 

 tobacco, the various leaf characters are ahuost 

 entirely masked by bad cultivation, and their 

 inheritance can only be studied if the crop is 

 grown to perfection. 



Science and practice must be combined in the 

 investigator who must himself strike a correct 

 balance between the two. The ideal point of 

 view of the improver is to I'ecognize agriculture 

 as an art which can best be developed by that 

 instrument called science. Once this is fully 

 realized and acted upon, the place of the experi- 

 ment station in agricidture will be undei'stood as 

 a matter of course and, the qualiflcations needed 

 by the workers will be self-evident. There will 

 be little or no progress if practical agriculturists 

 are associated with pure scientists m econonxic 

 investigations. This has often been tried and has 

 never yielded results of any importance. The 

 reason why such co-operation fails is that with- 

 out an appreciation of practice the scientist 

 himself never gets to the real heart of the problem. 

 The history of the indigo investigations in India 

 is a very good case in poin.t. During the last 20 

 years a number of scientists have been employed 

 in an endeavour to improve the production of 

 natural indigo. Over £50,000 have been ex- 

 pended on this work between 1898 and 1913, but 

 no results have been obtained, largely because 

 the scientists preferred to engage European 

 assistants on indigo estates to grow the.r exiDeri- 

 mental crops rather than to cultivate them them- 

 selves. The result was that the real problems 

 were not discovei'ed, a large amount of ineffective 

 work was done and valuable time was lost during 

 which the natural indigo industry dec'inecl and the 

 synthetic product rapidly established itself in the 

 markets of the woi'ld. The solution of the indigo 

 problem has recently been disclosed by a study 

 of the plant in the field. It is not too much to 

 say that if a properly qualified botanist with a 

 knowledge of agriculture had attacked the indigo 

 problem twenty years ago, the history of this 

 industry would have been very difl'erent. 



There remains for consideration the com- 

 mercial aspect cf investigations on crops and the 

 necessity, on the part of the worker, of keeping in 

 close touch with the requirements of the trade. 

 Particularly is this important in the case of 

 materials used in textile industries like cotton 

 where any marked alteration in the raw product 

 might easily involve extensive changes in 

 machinery. In the case of cereals like wheat, it 



IS necessary in improving the variety to follow 

 closely the needs of the manufacturer and to 

 ensure that any new types introduced i ito general 

 cultivation can be milled to advantage. The 

 successful merchant often possesses information 

 which is of the greatest value to the botanist and 

 which helps the investigator to perceive the 

 manner in which an improvement can most 

 effectively be made. 



That a combination of science, pra-tice. and 

 business ability in the same individual is essential 

 in all agricultural investigations dealing with 

 the plant will be evident if the kind of problem 

 awaiting solution is considered in detail. Many 

 of these questions fall into the following three 

 classes : 



(1) Improvements in the Efficiency of the 

 Plant. — Any attempt to increase the output of 

 a crop can only be successful if the physiology of 

 the plant is considered together with the economic 

 aspects of production. Such problems have to be 

 solved within the working conditions of the plant 

 factory and also within the general economic 

 limits imposed by labour and capital. In such 

 matters, the investigator might easily go astray 

 unless he keeps the laws of plant physiology in 

 view and unless he is fortified by a knowledge of 

 practice and an appreciation of the general work- 

 ing conditions. 



(2) The Treatment of Disease. — The in- 

 adequacy of much of the experiment station 

 work on the diseases of plants, in which fungi and 

 insects are concerned, has recently been referred 

 to by Professor Bateson in one of the sectional 

 addresses to the British Association. 



In the course of his speech, this gentleman drew 

 attention to the fact that there is at the present 

 time hardly any comprehensive study of the 

 morbid physiology of plants comparable with that 

 which has been so greatly developed in application 

 to animals. The nature of the resistance to 

 disease characteristic of so ma \y varieties and 

 the methods by which it may may be ensured, 

 offer a most attractive field for research, but it 

 is one in which the advance must be made by 

 the development of pure science, and those who 

 engage in it must be prepared for a long period 

 of labour without ostensible practical results. 



(3) The Creation of Improved Varieties. — 

 In this work an understanding of the needs of 

 the crop and a knowledge of systematy and gen- 

 etics must be combined with the insight of the 

 inventor, no possible scientific method can 

 succeed without the intuition of the breeder. 

 Any attempt to obtain or record the characters 

 of large numbers of plants and to obtain the 

 final selections by a scientific system of marks is 

 hopeless, as the investigator would be speedily 

 swamped by the volume of his material. The 

 insight of the breeder is necessary for the work 

 and the judgment, which comes by practice, in 

 the rapid summing up of essentials by eye is far 

 more useful than the most carefully compiled 

 records of any system of score cards. The 

 successfvil plant breeder is to a large extent born 

 and not made. Science helps the born breeder 

 by providing him with new and better instru- 

 ments, and, by bringing knowledge to bear from 

 many sides, it accelerates the output and lightens 

 the work in a multitude of ways. — The Af/ricul- 

 ture Journal of India (Monthly Bulletin of Agricultural 

 Intelligence). 



