76 REPORT OF THE CONFERENCE ON GENETICS, 
Elliott. As I came into the hall to-night Sir Thomas Elliott said 
to me, “I hope you are not going to say ditto to Ray Lankester. 
Lankester has asked for ten millions annually to fight disease.’’ Well, I 
am going to say “ditto”’ to Professor Lankester, though, perhaps, with 
some modifications. I suppose that in the spending of ten millions of 
money we should not altogether agree at once to the first suggestions 
made! Well, we might welcome or consider amendments. But if we 
could have ten millions—and I foresee that the day cannot be very long 
deferred when it will be recognised that a work like this is worth some 
millions—then I should ask that some part of that should be devoted 
to inquiries in heredity. Those who listened to Mr. Biffen’s paper this 
morning must have felt that here we had one of the first solid facts that 
has ever been discovered respecting the inheritance of disease. That fact 
stands alone at present, but I am certain that if the work that is devoted 
to some commercial questions were devoted to the study of the inherit- 
ance of disease, we should very soon have recognised that inheritance 
was a science which would be amenable to experimental inquiry, and that 
the results of that inquiry would be of the highest possible value to the 
human race. I wonder if those around me know what we feel in our 
hearts when we talk of research and heredity. We believe it, and we 
feel it, when we say, that there is something that will come out of that 
gcience that will equal, if not exceed, in direct consequence, anything that 
any other branch of science has ever discovered. A knowledge—a precise 
knowledge—of the laws of heredity will give man a power over his future 
that no other science has ever yet endowed him with. Iam not going 
to say that that knowledge is going to create the millennium of the 
human race; I only say it will change man’s destinies profoundly— 
whether for good or evil the future alone will show! When man has 
discovered a power he always turns that power on. Man is a curious 
animal. He sees a machine, with all its taps, and he turns them on. 
I am confident’ that the results of this knowledge will be such as we 
in this room literally do not dream of. They shall change the human 
race in a way beyond what Mr. Wells in his wildest imaginations has 
conceived. ‘That will happen when the whole nation wakes up to a 
knowledge of the laws of heredity. I am going to propose the health 
of the Board of Agriculture, Horticulture, and Fisheries. At this 
Conference the Department of Agriculture in Washington is represented 
by many distinguished delegates. I wish they would talk to Sir Thomas 
Elliott and tell him what the U.S.A. Board of Agriculture is doing. 
I have visited one of their sixty stations, and that one station alone 
is endowed with at least £20,000 a year. What are they doing there ? 
Benefiting the farmers, no doubt; but here let me ask you to think for 
a moment how that amount of money could be spent here—how it 
might be spent to the advantage not only of agriculture but of every 
sociological interest, if its employment were not fettered, as unfortunately 
it is in America. There, all money spent on experimental stations is 
strictly devoted to economical objects. I fully realise the difficulties. 
The Board of Agriculture is not able to pursue any line of inquiry which: 
does not get the farmers on their side, and which is not likely to be 
immediately convertible into bushels of wheat per acre or into thousands 
