PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 677 
sation 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 destructive of accepted 
opinions; when a Government department 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 Govern- 
ment employment has had to choose between his salary and his conscience, and 
though University laboratories are not always 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 depart- 
ment; he wants his value to be measured by the quality of his scientific work, 
rather than by his official adaptability. 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 Accounts 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; only a 
talent for advertisement comes to the front under such a régime. Of course, a 
State must maintain laboratories which undertake a certain amount of investi- 
gation in connection with its duties in the control of disease, &c., but, though 
it may be difficult to draw a defining line between research that arises out of 
administration and research in pursuit of knowledge, the distinction is easy to 
make in practice. For example, the State needs a veterinary laboratory for the 
purpose of checking the conclusions upon which the administrative regulations 
regarding this or that disease are based, and of testing serums, vaccines, and 
the like, but it would prove false economy in the end to entrust to this official 
institution the sole responsibility for investigations into animal diseases. 
Another advantage that arises from entrusting agricultural research to the 
Universities is that thereby one obtains the advice, and often the active co- 
operation, of men in the departments of pure science. I have already indicated 
how complex are the questions that agriculture raises; the man who is working 
- out soil problems may find one day that he is brought to a standstill by some 
physical or even mathematic difficulty he is not competent to deal with, on 
another occasion he may wish to consult a geologist, or again a zoologist. No 
soil laboratory pure and simple can afford to have men of all these qualifications 
upon its strength, but if it is attached to a University, its men are naturally 
in constant contact with other specialists from whom they may informally obtain 
the assistance they need. A special purpose laboratory must suffer if it is 
isolated from the general current of science, and this is particularly true of 
agriculture with its many contacts, and the natural inclination to locate its 
institutions in the country. Some link must be maintained between the research 
institution and the practical farmer, not so much for the sake of the latter, 
because he is rarely in a position to utilise directly, or even to understand, 
the work of the investigation, but in order to keep the work real and non- 
academic. Even from the purely scientific point of view the most fruitful lines 
of research are those suggested by practical life; many effects that prove to be 
of fundamental importance to theory, only become apparent in the large-scale 
workings of the commercial undertaking. The contact with farming that the 
research-worker needs should be provided by his association with the University 
department that is teaching agriculture and advising the farmers of its district; 
thus is established the connection that on the one hand brings the farmer’s 
problems to the investigators, and on the other translates the investigators’ 
results into practical advice. As I see it, the ideal organisation of research 
in agriculture is to associate a more or less specialised institution for the 
investigation of a particular class of problem with a University possessing an 
agricultural department, which is also charged with extension work by way 
