v A LONG TIME REQUIRED. 257 



tution. As to the general management, it seems 

 advisable to have a director with a board of com- 

 petent men, whose function would be to decide, after 

 careful investigation and exchange of views, what are 

 the fundamental experiments to be performed. These 

 experiments, when once decided upon, should be pur- 

 sued during a long period of years, and nothing 

 should be altered in their execution, unless con- 

 sidered advisable by the board, or unless the 

 experiment should be found useless or devoid of 

 chances of success. The main thing should be to 

 provide for the duration of this experiment, whether 

 the originators were living or dead, and to follow it 

 out for a long time. Time is an indispensable ele- 

 ment in such investigations, and experiments of this 

 sort will surely exceed the normal duration of human 

 lifetime. But, as old Pierre Belon writes in his 

 Remontrances sur le Defaut de Labour et Culture des 

 Plantes, 1558 : " II ne se fault pas excuser sur la lon- 

 gueur du temps pourentreprendrechoses seantesau bien 

 public." Into the details of the work of the chemists, 

 histologists, or physiologists, it is useless to enter ; the 

 mere enumeration of the varied facts which have been 

 quoted shows that their services are of the utmost 

 usefulness, and are quite necessary for the investiga- 

 tion of the results. Any number of experiments of 

 minor importance may be carried 



UNIVERSITY 



VV OF J 



