ii4 BOTANY AND INTENSIVE CULTIVATION 



to direct the pursuit along what appear to them 

 the most promising lines. It is no less their duty 

 to recognise that it becomes necessary from time 

 to time to call off the hounds of science and to 

 try a fresh scent. 



Nor will they forget that by useful knowledge 

 is meant knowledge which contributes to the 

 moral, social, intellectual, aesthetic, and material 

 welfare of mankind. 



The need for the review and co-ordination of 

 botanical work is now at its greatest. As the 

 Republic discovered not so long after it had cut 

 off Lavoisier's head, the State has need of savants 

 of botanists among others. Thus, if it is to 

 carry out successfully its rural programme with the 

 inevitable fiscal changes of policy, if it is to repopu- 

 late the country side, to clothe once again the hills 

 with forests, to replace poor grass by corn in 

 short to colonise Great Britain and Ireland, the 

 State must have our enthusiastic co-operation as 

 well as that of other and more socially important 

 sections of the community. There is no need 

 either to emphasise the importance of this problem 

 of home colonisation nor to declare that it is one 

 the solution of which will demand the co-operation 

 of all classes of the commonwealth. In this joint 

 enterprise there is a definite work in which Botanists 

 are competent to cooperate. That work concerns 

 the intensive cultivation of the land. To this it 

 may be objected with a certain measure of 



