80 REPORT OF THE CONFERENCE ON GENETICS. 
There are one or two absentees to-night whose absence we greatly— 
deeply—regret. I am not referring to the gentlemen who have been 
beguiled from the innocent pleasures of horticulture to Goodwood. I 
think there are some who would have been here had it not been for the 
gathering of the British Association at York. I think it is beginning to 
be clearly understood on all sides that unless we in this country take a 
little more interest in science we shall certainly be left behind in the 
world. Why are two of the absentees away to-night—Lord Balfour of 
Burleigh, an excellent gardener, and an active member of our Society’s 
Council, and the noble Earl at the head of the Department of Agriculture 
and Horticulture, Lord Carrington? They are in the House of Lords 
discussing what is considered to be a most important measure. I do not 
know whether you ever heard of what a very distinguished philosopher— 
Herbert Spencer—said about the laws that our legislators pass. He said 
that of every hundred laws passed in this country 90 per cent. were 
absolutely injurious: of the remaining 10 per cent, six were neither 
harmful nor advantageous, and that the residue of four were very advan- 
tageous indeed because they were devoted exclusively to repealing Acts 
that had been passed by some previous Parliament. Therefore I venture 
to think that if those two noble lords had been able to tear themselves 
away from the House of Lords to-night, they perhaps might have been no 
worse, and we should have profited. 
Some advances we have undoubtedly made in horticulture in the last 
twenty years, and I think the more we are able to take advantage of the 
great achievements Science is making, the more shall we prosper, and 
sooner or later I think we shall come to believe in this country, what I 
have so many times ventured to say, that the future is really in the hands 
of science. I beg to thank you most sincerely for listening to what I 
have had to say. 
Gop SAVE THE KING. 
