SOME PROBLEMS OF RESEARCH 21 



is true that the employment of first-class officers in the agricultural 

 departments was responsible for the great progress of cotton culti- 

 vation in Uganda, but whether the same agency is required else- 

 where remains open to question. It is also true that there are diffi- 

 culties in the division of an agricultural department into two sec- 

 tions, the more highly trained men employed in research and the 

 control of pests, and the less highly trained performing routine 

 field duties only, because scientific work is an integral part of the 

 department alike in the field and laboratory. Nevertheless, these 

 considerations point to one of the greatest needs of Africa to-day, 

 that of trained subordinate staff. This lack is felt not only in agri- 

 culture, but in every other branch of activity, and great efforts are 

 being made in many parts of the continent to fill the gap by the 

 higher education of African natives. 



WASTE OF RESEARCH 



The efforts of scientists throughout Africa result in the publica- 

 tion each year of a great quantity of material, mainly in official 

 documents such as annual departmental reports, bulletins, pam- 

 phlets, and occasional papers. It is worth considering for a moment 

 how many of these results eventually reach the scientists, outside 

 the territory concerned, who are working along similar lines or on 

 kindred subjects. To the busy scientist whose work includes the 

 perusal of many hundred books and papers generally presented in 

 a more or less uniform manner so that he can extract the contents 

 with little trouble, the average annual report is somewhat difficult 

 to handle. In their present form, they are not designed primarily 

 to give information to the scientific expert: they are reports on 

 departmental activities rather than on the progress of scientific 

 research as such. In some cases the results obtained by individual 

 workers are rewritten as scientific papers and submitted for publi- 

 cation to scientific societies or journals, but this represents an 

 additional labour, which many officers are unwilling to under- 

 take. 



It might be possible to adopt an agreed scheme for the presenta- 

 tion of reports which would include a common format, the separa- 

 tion of scientific fact from administrative detail, a standardization 



