468 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1917. 



scientific equipment in an attack upon the problems we are facing. 

 This week we have been canvassing the problems that need immediate 

 attention, and they are to be assigned to various research centers, 

 where properly trained men and adequate equipment are available. 

 I want to include this institution in these assignments. Your op- 

 portunity is an unusual one, for already you have many things that 

 are needed. You have the opportunity to respond to this call from 

 your country, and to see to it that research is properly provided for. 

 Such research work not only provides what are called the sinews of 

 war, when war becomes necessary, but it also means progress and 

 power in time of peace. It is this opportunity that led me to say 

 earlier in this address that perhaps you have builded better than you 

 knew. 



Do not be misled into thinking that only these problems should be 

 attacked that have been developed by some immediate need. Ee- 

 search is like the exploration of a new country. It must be traversed 

 throughout; all trails must be followed and mapped. Some trails 

 will lead to rich lands and valuable mines ; others will not. No one 

 can tell until everything has been explored. Your research work 

 here should mean an exploration of nature as represented by plants, 

 and there is no more important region of nature. The more we 

 know about plants the more intelligent we become in handling them. 

 I have known scientific explorers who discovered a new country and 

 mapped it, but no one at the time recognized it as good for anything. 

 Years afterwards it was discovered that it was rich in possibilities. 



Years ago an Austrian monk, working in his monastery garden, 

 discovered some interesting behavior in the plants he was breeding. 

 He recorded his facts and his conclusions in an obscure journal, and 

 no one paid any attention to it. What could be expected from a 

 monk pottering in his garden? Years afterwards the contribution 

 Avas discovered, and to-day it is the basis of most of our work in the 

 study of heredity, and this in turn has made our agriculture scientific. 

 No one knoAvs what may turn up in a garden like this one of yours. 

 It is a gold mine of opportunity. See to it that it is cultivated. 



