12 PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. 



invaded territory, in order to apply their hastily-acquired skill. 

 Most of them had never before had so much as an hour's lecture 

 on chemistry in their lives. 



Panic research will undoubtedly lead to effects analogous lo 

 those resulting from panic legislation. In neither case can the 

 procedure be sane, well-considered, evenly-balanced. In the 

 United States Experiment Station Record last October it was 

 said that 



The lesson has been taught that research cannot be carried on spas- 

 modically under stress of temporary emergency, but must go forward 

 continuously, year in and year out, from generation to generation. And 

 it must be surrounded by conditions in which it will best thrive, without 

 the handicap of being expected to produce something every day of imme- 

 diate market value or application. 



Now in many respects our mode of action in the past has 

 been the exact antithesis of this. Let me given you one example 

 from a printed report of my own, dated 13 years ago. Discussing 

 ihe investigation of our poisonous plants. I remarked: 



This most important branch of the laboratory's work is perhaps the 

 most unsatisfactorily performed. It is carried on at present in a most 

 casual way, instead of being earnestly and systematically undertaken. 

 Whenever a poisoning or suspected poisoning case occurs, problems have 

 to be grappled at short notice, and in a hurried and therefore often per- 

 functory manner, which should have been carefully investigated at leisure 

 months beforehand. 



In eleven successive annual reports I continued making 

 allusions to this matter, and in a report four years later than 

 that just quoted from I said : 



The complaint that I have to make is that the casual and incidental 

 character that these investigations are compelled to assume greatly militates 

 against results of enduring usefulness being arrived at. Matters of 

 this kind should be dealt with because of their intrinsic value 

 and not, as they at present are, merely as side-issues to the legal 

 proceedings against some " Kaffir doctor." 



In scientific research, as in so many other phases of activity, 

 it is " slow and steady that wins the race ": ad hoc measures only 

 court failure; and carrying this principle to its logical conclusion 

 means that research in pure science has the strongest claim on 

 State aid and encouragement. Prof. A. W. Crossley, in an address 

 on " Science and industrial problems," delivered before the Royal 

 Institution about three years ago, aptly quoted a remark made, 

 some two months before the war broke out, by one of the world's 

 most prominent industrial chemists — " Pure scientific research 

 work, carried out in the laboratory, is the soul of industrial 

 prosperity " ; and, as Sir J. J. Thomson has said, applied science 

 ma)^ lead to reforms, while research in pure science 

 leads to revolutions, a remark which may be supplemented by 

 one of Prof. W. J. Pope, that " practically every useful chemical 

 development of a technical kind has arisen as the result of some 

 [)urely scientific investigation."* 



But this is not the class of research that appeals to Govern- 

 ments : the research that they want and are willing to encourage 



* Chcni. News (1917), 116, 200. 



