September 21, 191 1] 



NATURE 



403 



him that he must not pursue that inquiry further because 

 he cannot foresee a direct and immediate application of the 

 knowledge is, I believe almost always, a course detrimental 

 to the real interests of the applied science. I could name 

 specific instances where in other countries thoroughly com- 

 petent and zealous investigators have by the short- 

 sightedness of superior officials been thus debarred from 

 following to their conclusion researches of great value and 

 novelty. 



In this country, where the Development Commission will 

 presumably for ' many years be the main instigator and 

 controller of agricultural research, the constitution of the 

 Advisory Board, on which Science is largely represented, 

 forms a guarantee that broader counsels will prevail, and 

 it is to be hoped that not merely this inception of the work, 

 but its future administration also, will be guided in the 

 same spirit. So long as a train of inquiry continues to 

 extend, and new knowledge^ that most precious com- 

 modity, is coming in, the enterprise will not be in vain and 

 it will be usually worth while to pursue it. 



The relative value of the different parts of knowledge in 

 their application to industry is almost impossible to 

 estimate, and a line of work should not be abandoned until 

 it leads to a dead end, or is lost in a desert of detail. 



We have, not only abroad, but also happily in this 

 country, several private firms engaged in various industries 

 — I may mention especially metallurgy, pharmacy, and 

 brewing — who have set an admirable example in this 

 matter, instituting researches of a costly and elaborate 

 nature, practically unlimited in scope, connected with the 

 subjects of their several activities, conscious that it is only 

 by men in close touch with the operations of the industry 

 that the discoveries can be made, and well assured that 

 they themselves will not go unrewarded. 



Let us on our part beware of giving false hopes. We 

 know no harmony " of sovran use against all enchant- 

 ments, mildew blast, or damp." Those who are wise 

 among us do not even seek it yet. Why should we not 

 take the farmer and gardener into our fullest confidence 

 and tell them this? I read lately a newspaper interview 

 with a fruit-farmer who was being questioned as to the 

 success of his undertaking, and spoke of the pests and 

 difficulties with which he had had to contend. He was 

 asked whether the Board of Agriculture and the scientific 

 authorities were not able to help him. He replied that 

 they had done what they could, that they had recommended 

 first one thing and then another, and he had formed the 

 opinion that they were only in an experimental stage. He 

 was perfectly right, and he would hardly have been wrong 

 had he said that in these things science is only approaching 

 the experimental stage. This should be notorious. There 

 is nothing to extenuate. To affect otherwise would be 

 unworthy of the dignity of science. 



Those who have the means of informing the public mind 

 on the state of agricultural science should make clear that 

 though something can be done .to help the practical man 

 already, the chief realisation of the hopes of that science is 

 still very far away, and that it can only be reached by 

 long and strenuous effort, expended in many various direc- 

 tions, most of which must seem to the uninitiated mere 

 profitless wandering. So only will the confidence of the 

 laity be permanently assured towards research. 



Nowhere is the need for wide views of our problems 

 more evident than in the study of plant-diseases. Hitherto 

 this side of agriculture and of horticulture, though full of 

 possibilities for the introduction of scientific method, has 

 been examined only in the crudest and most empirical 

 fashion. To name the disease, to burn the affected plants, 

 and to ply the crop with all the sprays and washes in 

 succession ought not to be regarded as the utmost that 

 science can attempt. There is at the present time hardly 

 any comprehensive study of the morbid physiology of 

 plants comparable with that which has been so greatly 

 developed in application to animals. The nature of the 

 resistance to disease characteristic of so many varieties, 

 and the modes by which it may be ensured, offers a most 

 attractive field for research, but it is one in which the 

 advance must be made by the development of pure science, 

 and those who engage in it must be prepared for a long 

 period of labour without ostensible practical results. It 

 has seemed to me that the most likely method of attack is 



NO. 2l86, VOL. 87] 



here, as often, an indirect one. We should probably do 

 best if we left the direct and special needs of agriculture 

 for a time out of account, and enlisted the services of 

 pathologists trained in the study of disease as it affects 

 man and animals, a science already developed and far 

 advanced towards success. Such a man, if he were to 

 devote himself to the investigation of the same problems in 

 the case of plants, could, I am convinced, make dis- 

 coveries which would not merely advance the theory of 

 disease-resistance in general very greatly, but would much 

 promote the invention of rational and successful treatment. 



As regards the application of Genetics to practice, the 

 case is not very different. When I go to the Temple Show 

 or to a great exhibition of live stock, my first feeling is 

 one of admiration and deep humility. Where all is so 

 splendidly done and results so imposing are already 

 attained, is it not mere impertinence to suppose that any 

 advice we are able to give is likely to be of value? 



But so soon as one enters into conversation with 

 breeders, one finds that almost all have before them some 

 ideal to which they have not yet attained, operations to 

 perform that they would fain do with greater ease and 

 certainty, and that, as a matter of fact, they are looking 

 to scientific research as a possible source of the greater 

 knowledge which they require. Can we, without presump- 

 tion, declare that genetic science is now able to assist 

 these inquirers? In certain selected cases it undoubtedly 

 can— and I will say, moreover, that if the practical men 

 and we students could combine our respective experiences 

 into one head, these cases would already be numerous. On 

 the other hand, it is equally clear that in a great range of 

 examples practice is so far ahead that science can scarcely 

 hope in finite time even to represent what has been done, 

 still less to better the performance. We cannot hope to 

 improve the Southdown sheep for its own districts, to take 

 a second off the trotting record, to increase the flavour of 

 the muscat of Alexandria, or to excel the orange and pink 

 of the rose Juliet. Nothing that we know could have made 

 it easier to produce the Rambler roses, or even to evoke 

 the latest novelties in sweet peas, though it may be 

 claimed that the genetic system of the sweet pea is, as 

 things go, fairly well understood. To do any of these 

 things would require a control of events so lawless and 

 rare that for ages they must probably remain classed as 

 accidents. On the other hand, the modes by which com- 

 binations can be made, and by which new forms can be 

 fixed, are through Mendelian analysis and the recent de- 

 velopments of genetic science now reasonably clear, and 

 with that knowledge much of the breeder's work is greatly 

 simplified. This part of the subject is so well understood 

 that I need scarcely do more than allude to it. 



A simple and interesting example is furnished by the 

 work which Mr. H. M. Leake is carrying out in the case 

 of cotton in India. The cottons of fine quality grown in 

 India are monopodial in habit, and are consequently late in 

 flowering. In the United Provinces a comparatively early- 

 flowering form is required, as otherwise there is not time 

 for the fruits to ripen. The early varieties are sympodial 

 in habit, and the primary apex does not become a flower. 

 Hitherto no sympodial form with cotton of high quality has 

 existed, but Mr. Leake has now made the combination 

 needed,' and has fixed a variety with high-class cotton and 

 the sympodial habit, which is suitable for cultivation in the 

 United Provinces. Until genetic physiology was developed 

 by Mendelian analysis, it is safe to say that a practical 

 achievement of this kind could not have been made with 

 rapidity or certainty. The research was planned on broad 

 lines. In the course of it much light was obtained on the 

 genetics of cotton, and features of interest were discovered 

 which considerably advance our knowledge of heredity in 

 several important respects. This work forms an admirable 

 illustration of that simultaneous progress both towards the 

 solution of a complex physiological problem and also 

 towards the successful attainment of an economic object 

 which should be the constant aim of agricultural research. 



Necessarily it follows that sucTi assistance as genetics can 

 at present give is applicable more to the case of plants and 

 animals which can be treated as annuals than to creatures 

 of slower generation. Yet this already is a large area of 

 operations. One of the greatest advances to be claimed 

 for the work is that it should induce raisers of seed crops 



