94 PKESIDKNTIAL ADDRKSS SliCTION li. 



been dene in England compared with what we should expect. 

 f)ut this may be partly accounted tor by the war. The Canad- 

 ians, at the instigation of Lord Shaughnessy, have made a begin- 

 ning in the establishment of the Canadian Research Bureau at 

 Montreal, thus seconding the excellent work, which has been 

 accomplished in recent years by their Mines Department. The 

 proximity of the United States will doubtless assist in nidking 

 for efficienc}', as the work of the scientific departments attached 

 to their Bureaus of Agriculture, Geology, Mines, Commerce, 

 Standards, etc., is too well known to need description. The Aus- 

 tralian Government has endowed a similar institution, the Com- 

 monwealth Institute of Science and Industry, to the extent of 

 half a million pounds as a beginning, the object in both cases 

 being the development of the natural resources for the benefit 

 of the countr}- in the first, and of the Enijjire in the second place. 

 So far as I am aware, in this country nothing has yet been done 

 in this direction, other than the meeting of the scientific societ'es 

 of the Rand, held recently in Johannesburg, which laid stress 

 on this matter, and formed a Committee to further the project. 



No opportunity like the present has ever before presented 

 itself, and the cessation of the war will witness the still fiercer 

 struggle of industrial competition, for which we must gird on our 

 armour. At present we are, as I have shown, exporting our law 

 materials and importing the articles manufactured from them, 

 hence our first and foremost need is to attempt to make our- 

 selves independent of others, as far as our own wants are con- 

 cerned. For this purpose research is necessary, and, in my 

 opinion, the prime mover must be the State, since its proper 

 execution demands, if performed efficiently, an organisation 

 which is beyond the sco|)e of the individual. It would take too 

 long to enter fully, as the subject most rightly merits, into all 

 the details of its recjuirements, and 1 shall therefore content 

 myself with a brief sununary of the most essential considerations 

 and necessities. In the first place, however, 1 desire to exj)lode 

 a popular fallacy, that there are two kinds of research, which 

 have been miscalled pure and applied research. They corres- 

 pond to the undignified and unworthy divisions into which even 

 science itself has been classified. If research be undertaken, as 

 it is, to thrust back the boundaries of the unknown, and to 

 widen the areas of existing knowledge, (hen, no matter if the 

 purpose for the moment be, in a sense, the abstract, such as the 

 proof or establishment of a law, principle, or hypothesis, or the 

 concrete, such as we find e-Kemplified in the successful develop- 

 ment of the contact method of manufacturing sulphuric acid, as 

 a result of the commercial preparation of indigo, it is somewhat 

 of an anachronism to draw a sharp line of division. More 

 especially is the practice to be condemned, since in the ])opular 

 mind research of the former kind is sujjposed to have no utility 

 whatever, whereas without it the latter \vould be absolutely im- 

 l)OSsible, and hence in an\ scheme which may be ])Ut forward ii 



