fANTJARY 28, 1915} 



NATURE 



605 



make the animal a more efficient converter of coarse 

 vegetable fodder into hif^h-grade food. That there is 

 plenty of room for development in this direction may 

 be inferred from the tacts that Prof. Wood has 

 directed attention to in the paper he has recently sub- 

 mitted to this section. What the grazier calls a good 

 doer will la\ on as fat and flesh 20 per cent, of thj 

 energ} it receives in its food, as against 7 per cent, 

 stored by a bad doer ; here is an enormous margin 

 for improvement if the average cattle are only brought 

 up to the level of efficiency of the best. No one has 

 yet worked out the most economic rate of feeding for 

 different classes of live stock, the type of ration that 

 will produce the largest amount of meat from a given 

 weight of food, independent of the rate at which the 

 increase takes place. 



Granted the dependence upon research of the agri- 

 culture of the future if it is to meet the requirements 

 of an increased population and a more advanced state 

 of society, how can the required investigations best 

 be organised? We may take it for granted that in 

 some form or other the State must find the funds ; 

 in this connection at any rate there are no prizes for 

 tho private worker such as would make agricultural 

 research a tempting, even a possible, commercial 

 speculation. There is a very limited field for patents 

 or royalties ; the breeder of a new crop variety can 

 only exploit it with success if he has some big com- 

 mercial organisation behind him, and even then a 

 very few seasons place it in everyone's hands. The 

 solutions to most of the great outstanding problems 

 which I have outlined above could not be sold at a 

 price, however much they might improve the output of 

 every farmer. Indeed, there is thi& character about 

 the advances which science may make in agriculture, 

 and it explains the lack of interest in research ex- 

 hibited by many hard-headed farmers, that the benefit 

 comes to the community rather than to the individual. 

 Farmer is comf>eting with farmer, and if production 

 is raised all round the price is apt to drop corre- 

 spondingly, so that shrewd men who are doing very 

 well as things are, are very content with their limited 

 vision, provided the general ignorance remains un- 

 enlightened. However, we need not argue this point ; 

 every civilised country has accepted the necessity of 

 maintaining agricultural research ; even Great Britain, 

 the last home of go-as-you-please, has fallen into line 

 within the last year or two. 



.\ssuming that the State pays, shall the immediate 

 organisation and control of the work remain with the 

 -State direct, or be placed in the hands of semi-official 

 bodies like the universities? The character of th'^» 

 work required must settle this question. We may as 

 well make up our minds at the outset that agricultural 

 research is a very complex affair, which is going to 

 arrive at commercial results very slowlv. It deals 

 Avith the fundamental problems of life itself; its 

 problems mostly lie in the border country where two 

 or more sciences meet, the debatable land which th? 

 man of pure science distrusts and affects to desoise 

 because there his clean and simple academic methods 

 do not apply. Hence we have to attract to research in 

 agricultural matters minds of the ven.- best quality, 

 men of imagination and determination, and give them 

 scope and freedom to make the best of themselves. 

 Now it has been recently claimed that the nation can 

 only attract men of the necessary quality to research 

 by instituting some system of prizes that shall be 

 commensurate with the rewards that lie before the 

 successful lawyer or business man, who has embarked 

 upon some comi>etitive commercial career. I entirelv 

 dissent from this view; the quality of a man's work 

 is not to be measured by the results it happens to 

 attain, for results are often matters of luck, but least 

 of all is to be measured bv the amount of public 

 NO. 2361, VOL. 94I 



attention the results arouse. It is in the nature of 

 some kind of discoveries to e.xcite the popular imagina- 

 tion, but these discoveries do not necessarily involve 

 more credit to the discoverer, than many others the 

 burial-place of which in this or that volume of Trans- 

 actions is known only to a select few. Once make 

 publicity the criterion, and the scientific man is at the 

 mercy of the boom and the advertisement ; a good 

 newspaper manner is more valuable than high thinking. 

 Moreover, I would for the man of science say with Mal- 

 volio : '• I think nobler of the soul." Give him a living 

 wage and proper opportunities and he will give his 

 best work without the added inducement of a chance 

 of making his fortune. The real point is the living 

 wage, and this does not mean the starveling price at 

 which a man can be bought just after taking his 

 degree. At present the career of research has some 

 of the aspects of a blind-alley employment, the young 

 man enters on it with enthusiasm, only to find ten 

 years later that he has no market value in any other 

 occupation and that he is expected to continue on an 

 artisan's wage. 



^^'e have then to ensure the scientific man con- 

 tinuous employment ; in such special subjects as agri- 

 cultural science presents, we cannot trust to pick him 

 for a particular job, and let him go when it is finished ; 

 there must be some reasonable sort of a career in 

 investigation. The State cannot simply pay for 

 results ; men will not qualify for such precarious 

 chances of employment. The great results come as 

 incalculably as the great poetn,\ their value is similarly 

 untranslatable into the cash standard, and though no 

 provision of posts can ensure a supply of the finest 

 flowers of the mind, routine science has this advantage 

 over routine poetrv, that it has some value and is even 

 necessary to bring to 'fruition the advances of the 

 pioneers. And when the great mind do?s happen to 

 bo bcrn, he can cnly be turned to account if an 

 organisation exists within which he can find opp>or- 

 tunities for work. Now such an organisation seems 

 to be provided by the universities rather than by the 

 State. The type of man who makes an investigator 

 is apt to be markedly individual ; he can work better 

 under the looser system of control that prevails in a 

 university than under the official hierarchy of a 

 Government department. The methods of research 

 are anarchical, and ought to be continuously destruc- 

 tive of accepted opinions ; when a Government depart- 

 m.ent takes an official point of view, it is apt to insist 

 on its being respected, and not criticised by its officers 

 on the strength. It has happened within recent years 

 that a scientific man in Government employment has 

 had to choose between his salar}' and his conscience, 

 and though university laboratories are not alwavs 

 temples of free thought, their atmosphere is distinctly 

 more open than that of a Government office. The 

 type of man most fitted for. research is more attracted 

 by a university than a department ; he wants his value 

 to be measured by the quality of his scientific work, 

 rather than by his official adaptabilPty. But the 

 greatest objection to making research a function of 

 Government is that it is of necessity subjected to an 

 annual detailed justification of its expenditure to a 

 non-expert legislative body. When one reads the 

 cross-examination of this or that investigator by the 

 Committee of Public .\ccounts of certain States which 

 maintain departments of agricultural research, one 

 realises the hopelessness of expecting the slow, far- 

 reaching scientific work that ultimately counts, from 

 men who are subject to such an annual criticism. 

 The almost complete sterility of certain .State organi- 

 sations for research on a great scale can be absolutely 

 set down to the call that prevails for an annual report 

 of results which seem to pay their way; onlv a talent 

 for advertisement comes to the front under such a 



