March 2^, 1911] 



NATURE 



127 



distribution of the disease with regard to cottage gardens. 

 Workmen who have used spades in digging in infected 

 soil have, when planting potatoes in clean ground, carried 

 the disease on these tools. 



Trials of a large number of fungicides have failed to 

 discover any of value. With regard to the behaviour of 

 different varieties of potatoes to the disease, it has been 

 found that all the best and more generally grown varieties, 

 sucti as Up to Date, British Queen, and allied sorts, are 

 very susceptible. In the " variety tests," however, marked 

 resistance to the disease has been shown by a number of 

 other varieties (Langworthy, Golden Wonder, What's 

 U'anted, &c.). 



A clear account of the life-history of the fungus is 

 given, and the new fact reported that the development of 

 warts continues during winter months in stored potatoes. 

 The various plates published with this report are unusually 

 good. E. S. S. 



PROFESSORS AND PRACTICAL MEN.^ 



A FTER allusions to a boyhood spent among practical 

 ■^ men, to subsequent university life in Great Britain 

 and Germany, and to the tendency of English men of 

 science with s.uch experience to extol the German system 

 and recommend its adoption. Prof. Smithell's proceeded as 

 follows : — 



I am sure that, among the class to which I belong, 

 there is a danger of underestimating the deep-seated powers 

 of Englishmen, of neglecting the true genius of our 

 countrymen, and, in short, of falling into a narrow- 

 mindedness which tends to put us out of sympathy with 

 the people we desire to serve. I think that no one who 

 has studied the history of our industrial development, or 

 has moved observantly among our industrial community, 

 can have failed to be impressed by the great native 

 capacity of the Englishman for practical affairs. The 

 quality is one exceedingly difficult to define. It is very 

 tiusive ; but it is there — this power of doing things — a 

 power compounded of energy, shrewdness, enterprise, 

 determination, sense of the fitness of things, and know- 

 ledge of the intuitive kind. Who does not know the man 

 who, somehow or other, can get hold of the right thing ; 

 knows a good thing when he sees it ; has an unerring 

 sense of a wrong thing ; knows when and where to buy 

 a thing, when and where to sell a thing — who, in short, 

 does not know a good craftsman ; and where in the world 

 will you find a better than in England? I honestly believe 

 — nowhere. And yet it may be said that a man who is 

 this, and no more than this, is but a " serviceable savage." 

 I do not agree. He is a man who has developed one set 

 of faculties ; but it is a set by no means to be disparaged, 

 by no neglect to be allowed to rust. I honour the man 

 in his workshop who can tell by the look, the feel, the 

 sense of a thing, what it is good for, as well as I can 

 tell by the ight of science from the intellectual eminence 

 of a university, for I know that if he is really first-rate 

 in his way, he can assess the value of things for which 

 my science has yet no touchstone. It will be, I dare say, 

 many a long day before an epicure can choose his vintage 

 by chemical analysis ; it will certainly be long before 

 -rience can fully supplant the finely cultivated instinct of 

 he true practical man. 



I trust, therefore, gentlemen, that if I, a mere man of 

 science, take upon myself to talk to you about education 

 in relation to your own pursuits, I do not neglect that 

 vastly important element, of education, that development 

 of " mother wit," which comes to man as he fulfils his 

 appointed task of wrestling in the world with men and 

 things for his survival among the fittest. I am not going 

 to emulate the action of a learned acquaintance of mine, 

 who has recently taken upon himself to lecture the pioneers 

 of aviation because they have not delayed their heroic 

 nterprise until the mathematicians have discovered the 

 rue theory of stability. Scientific men of this kind, if 

 they had their way, seem to be most likely to achieve the 

 irue practice of stagnation. I do not bid you cease to lay 

 mains, to erect gas-holders, or to make gas-fires until we 



1 Presidenti.-il Address to the Society of British Gas Industries, delivered 

 at the annual meeting held in Leeds on March 3, by Prof. Arthur Smithells, 

 F.R.S. 



NO. 2160, VOL. 86] 



in the august seclusion of our learned halls have worked, 

 out the whole true science of heating and illumination. 



It is, however, man's prerogative, and it should be his 

 delight, to possess, to use, and to extend the faculty of 

 reason ; to increase his power over the forces of nature, 

 and constrain them to his service by a deliberate, a care- 

 fully organised, and an unceasing cultivation of the human 

 mind. The true barbarian is the man who is content to 

 do, and does not want to know ; and yet how many men 

 are there not, whom no one could call barbarians, who- 

 look upon our system of education with a degree of dis- 

 trust that increases in intensity as their survey passes 

 upwards from the elementary school to the university? 

 'Ihis, in my judgment, is a most serious question of the 

 day. 



1 have long held the opinion that education in England 

 is afflicted from top to bottom with an utterly exaggerated, 

 fear of what is called useful knowledge. In that fear> 

 much of a vital kind has been left undone, and much has 

 been given in the name of education which helps its. 

 possessor neither to truer wisdom, better work, nobler 

 conduct, nor to greater happiness. The world cries out 

 for educational bread, and it receives only too often aa 

 academic stone. 



I do not know that I am behind other men in the 

 delight 1 feel in abstract studies, and I can honestly say 

 it is but rarely I envy another man his larger share of 

 loaves and fishes ; but knowledge gathered for what is- 

 sometimes called its own sake, and treasured for its own 

 sake, seems to me in great danger of unwholesomeness,. 

 and a learned man, who is merely a man of erudition, to 

 be as likely to prove a mischief as he is certain to be a 

 bore. 



At the head of our educational system stand the universi- 

 ties. A university is, or should be, in essence a mine 

 and a mart for the highest learning. It was in its origia 

 an adjunct to those callings which made the greatest 

 demand upon the powers of thought. You may put it 

 more picturesquely, no doubt, but it suits my purpose best 

 to use homely terms, for I believe too little stress has- 

 been placed upon the real beginning and the original pur- 

 pose of universities as institutions standing in direct 

 relationship to definite callings. It is, I believe, because 

 our university system has not kept pace with the great 

 changes that have taken place in the character of human 

 occupations, that universities have failed to secure or to 

 retain the sympathy of a large section of the community. 

 The great delay in the development of research and instruc- 

 tion in natural science in the universities led to a corre- 

 sponding delay in the dissemination of elementary scientific 

 knowledge through our schools, and in consequence we find 

 to-day in the older generation of our more educated 

 citizens, to say nothing of those less educated, a whole 

 legion of men whose knowledge of science would not 

 correspond in terms of their grammar to knowing the 

 difference between a noun and an adjective, in their geo- 

 graphy the difference between latitude and longitude, and 

 in their Latin to that between Cicero and Cresar. 



Now I lay great stress upon this lack of the general 

 dissemination of scientific knowledge, because people some- 

 times say to me that, after all, we have surely had many 

 distinguished men of science in our universities for 

 generations past. It is true ; but they were not preparing 

 a market for their wares ; they were elaborating in their 

 seclusion something which was utterly mysterious to the 

 average man. Even to-day people come occasionally into 

 my laboratory with the air of men entering a hall of 

 mystery or a chamber of horrors, fearful of what may 

 befall them. Again, people say to me, surely the indus- 

 trial fruits of scientific knowledge have long been recog- 

 nised. True again, most palpably true; but how the fruit 

 is related to the knowledge, how the seed is sown, how 

 it is tended, what should be done to nurture the plant, 

 that is not known. It is not known becau.se your educa- 

 tional system did not achieve this one thing for the com- 

 munity — it did not put its victims for a single occasion in- 

 their lives in the position of asking a simple scientific 

 question and of faithfully finding the answer by experi- 

 ment. 



Now the portion of knowledge which most completely 

 and vitally interpenetrates our manufactures is naturat 

 science, and it has been, I think, an incalculable dis- 



