540 



NATURE 



[December 23, 1920 



that of relative importance. The great difliculty 

 in securing suitable premises, and the congested 

 and overworked state of university institutions, 

 have temporarily displaced original research from 

 its deserved place of priority. The collecting of 

 information, on the other hand, was at once useful 

 and feasible. 



Much emphasis has been given, both in this 

 country and in the U.S.A., to the view that in- 

 dustrial research associations should seek after 

 fundamentals. Quite recently in an important 

 publication appeared the sentence : " It cannot be 

 stated too strongly that the main object of re- 

 search associations is fundamental research, and 

 that consequently results will usually be slow in 

 coming." With a full sense of the profound 

 respect due to the authors of this statement, the 

 present writer begs leave to disagree. In his 

 view, the main object of industrial research asso- 

 ciations is profit, for without profit no industry 

 can live. Disregard by men of science of this 

 vital fact is probably responsible for much of the 

 apathy shown towards science by men in com- 

 merce and industry. Here it must be added that 

 the profit point of view is not necessarily a short 

 view; let the vista be as long and as broad as 

 economic conditions warrant, and in cases of 

 doubt let the error lie in distance and in 

 breadth. 



The membership ofgthe Research Association of 

 British Motor and Allied Manufacturers represents 

 at present only about one-thiid of the British motor 

 industry, but it is the object of the council of the 

 association to build up an organisation which 

 shall become a representative national body in the 

 automobile world, and, by working on a practical 

 yet progressive policy, fully adapted to the present 

 temper of the trade, it is hoped to convince not 

 only the entire British motor industry, but also 

 the various allied and accessory trades, of their 

 interest in research. It is clear that the larger 

 the membership becomes, so much the greater are 

 the resources of the association and the benefits 

 of membership. Until the entire British motor 

 industry is included, strict secrecy will be ob- 

 served in regard to any results of advantage to 



the trade. At the same time, the interests of 

 research workers (in the pay of the association), 

 to whom credit is an important form of reward, 

 will be assured by publication of their results 

 after members of the association have had, say, 

 three or five years' start of non-members. 



There is one difference between pure science 

 and technical science which it is believed has not 

 been emphasised before. When a technical 

 worker is given a problem by industry, the answer 

 or solution is, as a rule, wanted at once, whereas 

 a worker in pure science has, or should have, 

 unlimited time at his disposal. This cardinal dif- 

 ference imposes a totally different solution in the 

 two kinds of work. The technologist may be 

 called upon to eliminate a wasteful process or a 

 dangerous condition. He is not authorised to 

 spend twenty years in finding out a perfect pro- 

 cess or in determining exactly what condition is 

 just safe. He is asked to cut out as much waste 

 as possible at once, and, if advisable, to go on 

 improving the process, or in the other case his 

 task is to find out what is safe enough with a 

 reasonable margin for the various probable errors 

 to be expected. The great majority of technical 

 problems cannot be enunciated precisely ; only a 

 more simple analogue can, as a rule, be con- 

 sidered. The end in view is an immediate solu- 

 tion sufficiently accurate for the work in hand. 



When the technical worker has solved his 

 problem and passed the solution to the designer, 

 he will see, as a rule, unless his scientific curi- 

 osity be dwarfed and shrunken, many interesting 

 paths which invite his investigation had he but the 

 needful time and equipment. It is here that he 

 can serve pure science by handing on his boundary 

 problems to the specially gifted men who devote 

 their lives to the development of science as dis- 

 tinct from its applications. How much is handed 

 on in this way and how much retained for in- 

 vestigation by the research association will 

 depend on the ability, vision, and other resources 

 of those concerned ; the experience of industrial 

 research organisations in Germany and in America 

 seems to show that the short view does not pay 

 in the long run. 



Obituary. 



Sir D. E. Hutchins. 

 "T^HE death in New Zealand was announced in 

 *■ the Morning Post of December 3 of Sir 

 David Hutchins, the well-known forester, at 

 seventy years of age. Sir Dayid (with eleven con- 

 temporaries, including the late Prof. W. R. 

 Fisher, Mr. E. C. Hill, late Inspector-General of 

 Forests in India, and Mr. E. P. Popert, late 

 Forestry Adviser to the Commissioners of 

 Woods and Forests) was appointed a probationer 

 for the Indian forest service in the spring of 1870, 

 and sent to France for instruction in forestry. 

 Shortly afterwards, on the outbreak of the Franco- 

 German War, he returned and studied, with the 



NO. 2669, VOL. 106] 



other probationers, botany and other auxiliary 



subjects in Scotland under the supervision of the 



late Dr. Cleghorn, himself a retired distinguished 



Indian forest officer. After the end of the war in 



1871 Sir David returned to France and studied 



forestry at Nancy until the autumn of 1872. He 



joined the Indian forest service at the end of that 



year, and remained in it until the end of 1885. 



Owing to ill-health, he was then transferred to 



the forest service of Cape Colony. During the 



i latter part of his service in India Sir David was 



i occupied with the measurement of Casuarina 



I plantations which had been established along the 



1 Madras coast. From the statistics thus obtained. 



