588 TRANSACTIONS OP SUB-SECTION K. 



Now, it is not in dispute that wherever agricultural science has been properly 

 organised valuable results have been attained, some of very high importance 

 indeed ; yet with full appreciation of these achievements, it is possible to ask 

 whether the whole outcome might not have been greater still. In the. course of 

 recent years I have come a good deal into contact with those who in various 

 countries are taking part in such work, and I have been struck with the unani- 

 mity that they have shown in their comments on the conditions imposed upon 

 them. Those who receive large numbers of agriculture bulletins purporting to 

 give the results of practical trials and researches will, I feel sure, agree with 

 me that with certain notable exceptions they form on the whole dull reading. True 

 they are in many cases written for farmers and growers in special districts, 

 rather than for the general scientific reader, but I have sometimes asked myself 

 whether those farmers get much more out of this literature than I do. I doubt 

 it greatly. Nevertheless, to the production of these things much labour and 

 expense have been devoted. I am sure, and I believe that most of those engaged 

 in these productions themselves feel, that the effort might have been much better 

 applied elsewhere. Work of this unnecessary kind is done, of course, to satisfy 

 a public opinion which is supposed to demand rapid returns for outlay, and to 

 prefer immediate apparent results, however trivial, to the long delay which is the 

 almost inevitable accompaniment of any serious production. For my own part, 

 I greatly doubt whether in this estimate present public opinion has been rightly 

 gauged. Enlightenment as to the objects, methods, and conditions of scientific 

 research is proceeding at a rapid rate. I am quite sure, for example, that no 

 organisation of agricultural research now to be inaugurated under the Develop- 

 ment Commission will be subjected to the conditions laid down in 1887 when 

 the Experimental Stations of the United States were established. For them it 

 is decreed in section 4 of the Act of Establishment : — • 



' That bulletins or reports of progress shall be published at said stations 

 at least once in three months, one copy of which shall be sent to each news- 

 paper in the States or Territories in which they are respectively located, 

 and to such individuals actually engaged in farming as may request the 

 same and as far as the means of the station will permit.' 



It would be difficult to draft a condition more unfavourable to the primary 

 purpose of the Act, which was ' to conduct original researches or verify experi- 

 ments on the physiology of plants and animals.' I can scarcely suppose the 

 most prolific discoverer should be invited to deliver himself more than once a 

 year. Not only does such a rule compel premature publication — that nuisance 

 of modern scientific life — but it puts the investigator into a wrong attitude to- 

 wards his work. He will do best if he forget the public and the newspaper 

 of his State or Territory for long periods, and should only return to them when, 

 after repeated verification, he is quite certain he has "something to report. 



In this I am sure the best scientific opinion of all countries would be agreed. 

 If it is true that the public really demand continual scraps of results, and 

 cannot trust the investigators to pursue research in a reasonable way, then 

 the public should be plainly given to understand that the time for inaugurating 

 researches in the public's name has not arrived. Men of science have in some 

 degree themselves to blame if the outer world has been in any mistake on these 

 points. It cannot be too widely known that in all sciences, whether pure or ap- 

 plied, research is nearly always a very slow process, uncertain in production, and 

 full of disappointments. This is true, even in the new industries, chemical and 

 electrical, for instance, where the whole industry has been built up from the begin- 

 ning on a basis developed entirely by scientific method and by the accumulation 

 of precise knowledge. Much more must any material advance be slow in the case 

 of an ancient art like agriculture, where practice represents the casual experi- 

 ence of untold ages and accurate investigation is of yesterday. Problems 

 moreover relating to unorganised matter are in their nature simpler than 

 those concerned with the properties of living things, a region in which accurate 

 knowledge is more difficult to attain. Here the research of the present day can 

 aspire no higher than to lay the foundation on which the following generations 

 will build. When this is realised it will at once be perceived that both those 

 who are engaged in agricultural research and those who are charged with the 



