tory experiment may one day flow a stream of new forms of 

 living things. 



But we are getting into a region of speculation hardly to be 

 justified even by the title of this address. Though these things 

 come to pass and some of us be willing to sing our Nunc 

 Dimittis, I doubt whether Presidents of Boards of Agriculture 

 will ever be among the number. Their salvation lies along 

 other paths. It is for us poor servants of research to help to 

 smooth their way as best we can. Let us then consider for a 

 few moments this study of genetics in its purely utilitarian 

 aspect. 



To an audience like this it is unnecessary for me to 

 dilate upon the necessity of accurate knowledge adequately 

 presented. The spirit of research is to a modern civilisation 

 what oxygen is to a living tissue. Without it there must 

 inevitably ensue decay and ultimately death. If, as a nation, 

 we have not yet learned this lesson, we are doomed. I am 

 going to assume that we have learned it, and that, in the 

 future, research in genetics, as well as in other branches of 

 science, is not going to be hampered and stunted merely 

 through lack of material means. Essential as these are, even 

 more essential are the men. And they are very much more 

 difficult to find. Every young man who starts off to do 

 some research work is not necessarily endowed with the true 

 spirit of investigation. Only too often he is attracted by the 

 novelty of the thing, by the pleasure of playing with new and 

 unfamiliar tools. For the great work that is to be done it is the 

 born investigators that we want, the rari nantes whose hearts 

 are in it, who refuse to be sucked down by the swirling induce- 

 ments of life. 



Huxley once said that " if the nation could purchase a 

 potential Watt, or Davy, or Faraday, at the cost of one 

 hundred thousand pounds down, he would be dirt-cheap at 

 the money." Since that was written we are all unhappily 

 aware of the great fall in the purchasing power of money. At 

 the same time the machinery of to-day transmutes knowledge 

 into commodities so very much more rapidly that I have no 

 doubt Huxley would have multiplied his valuation many times 



