NA rURE 



[March 23, 1922 



work, men being seconded for service as required. 

 The Committee, however, expects such problems to be 

 so numerous that the universities could give adequate 

 help only if their scientific staffs were greatly enlarged. 

 To secure this increase the Report adopts Lord Milner's 

 suggestion that research departments should be 

 established at those universities to which the subject 

 would appeal by local interests or environment.. Lord 

 Milner has promised that if the universities would 

 endeavour to collect funds from local industries for 

 such departments, the Colonial Office would support 

 the appeals by testifying that the establishment of new 

 chairs and the enlargement of the professorial staffs in 

 the departments of science throughout the universities 

 would be a great and permanent service to the Empire. 

 Sir Walter Fletcher, in a reservation appended to 

 the Report, regrets that its proposals regarding appeals 

 for such endowments are so indefinite. He remarks 

 that it leaves untouched the practical questions as 

 to " Who will make the appeal ? What appeal } By 

 what mechanism or in what modes } And on what 

 occasions ? " He says that no steady cultivation of 

 university resources for the ends proposed can be . 

 effected without a general scientific staff, and recom- 

 mends a special advisory committee in each of the de- 

 partments of science concerned. Sir Herbert Read 

 replies to this criticism, in a covering letter annexed to 

 the Report, that the Colonial Office has already the 

 help of adequate advisory committees, and that in 

 some subjects there are, indeed, too many. Thus, 

 dealing with tropical medicine there are the Tropical 

 Diseases Bureau, the Tropical Diseases Research Fund 

 Committee, the Advising Medical and Sanitary Com- 

 mittee for Tropical Africa, and the Schools of Tropical 

 Medicine in London and Liverpool. Sir Herbert Read 

 remarks that in this case the machinery should be 

 simplified and not enlarged ; but, despite this ex- 

 perience, the establishment of scattered research in- 

 stitutes is the system which the Committee recom- 

 mends. Laboratories for special researches attached 

 to university departments are subject to the risk 

 of lack of continuity between the work of one pro- 

 fessor and that of his successor. This drawback may 

 be reduced by the establishment and endowment of 

 research chairs to superintend such laboratories ; but, 

 even if the funds could be obtained, such chairs 

 might soon outlive their usefulness owing to changed 

 industrial conditions. 



The establishment of these independent research 

 institutes might prove an extravagant method of con- 

 ducting much of the ordinary research necessary for 

 colonial development. A central institution, which 

 could call on the university staffs to help with special 

 problems, might be a far more economical method 

 NO. 2734, VOL. 109] 



of organising this work. There is already such an 

 institution — the Imperial Institute. The Report does 

 not mention it, though reference is made to its work^ 

 for a letter by Lord Milner which is printed with the 

 Report, illustrates the great economic value of scientific 

 investigation by the discovery of the Udi coalfields in 

 Nigeria, which was due to a survey organised by the 

 Imperial Institute under a man whom it enlisted. 

 The Imperial Institute is under the management of 

 the Colonial Office, and its extensive laboratories, staff;, 

 and resources should be available for the investigation 

 of problems connected with economic biology, geology, 

 and mineralogy, in any part of the Empire which has 

 not adequate scientific departments of its own. As 

 the Committee was appointed to consider the relations 

 of the universities to research, the Imperial Institute 

 may have seemed outside its province. Its scheme is, 

 however, attended by the danger of overlap of the kind 

 which, as Sir Herbert Read remarks, has already de- 

 veloped not only between different independent de- 

 partments, but also between all the proposed research 

 institutes and the Imperial Institute, which was founded 

 expressly to investigate the economic resources of the 

 British Empire overseas. 



A Monograph on Wheat. 



The Wheat Plant : A Monograph. By Prof. J. Percival. 

 Pp. x-t-463. (London : Duckworth and Co., 1921.) 

 635. net. 



PROF. PERCIVAL'S monograph fills one of the 

 many great gaps in English agricultural litera- 

 ture by providing, for the first time in our language, 

 a comprehensive account of the wheat plant, the most 

 important of the cereal crops. Some idea of the 

 magnitude of the work involved in the production of 

 this book is derived from a statement in the preface 

 that it is based on the study of what is " probably the 

 most representative collection in existence," since it 

 " includes all the races of wheats, numbering nearly 

 2000 forms derived from almost all wheat-growing 

 regions of the world," whilst a brief glance at any 

 section of the book is sufficient to convince the reader, 

 especially perhaps the reader familiar with the crop, 

 that this study has been peculiarly exhaustive. 



Part I is devoted to the results of investigations 

 on the morphology, anatomy, development, and growth 

 of the wheat plant. When the importance of the crop is 

 taken into consideration the existing literature on 

 these subjects is singularly scanty, and the detailed 

 accounts, covering some 140 pages, will save trouble 

 to many future investigators. Further information 

 on the cytology of the chief races of wheat and on the 



