478 TRANSACTIONS OP SECTION K. 



Some months ago the various Sectional Committees received a request to 

 consider what could be done in their respective Sections to meet problems which 

 would arise after the war. Your Committee met and discussed the matter, with 

 the result that a set of queries was sent round to representative botanists asking 

 that suggestions might be presented for consideration by the Committee. A 

 number of suggestions were received of a very varied kind, indicating that in 

 the opinion of many botanists at any rate much might be done to utilise our 

 science and its trained workers in the interests of the State and Empire. Your 

 Committee decided to arrange for reports to be prepared on several of the more 

 important aspects by members who were specially fitted to discuss these aspects, 

 and these will be presented ili the course of the meeting. These reports will, I 

 am convinced, be of great value, and may lead to helpful discussion ; they may 

 also open up the way to useful work. 



For my own part, while I might have preferred to consider in my Address 

 some subject of more purely botanical interest, I felt that vinder the circum- 

 stances an academic discourse would be out of place, and that I too must 

 endeavour to do something to effect a more cordial understanding between 

 botany and its economic applications. 



For many of us this means the breaking of new ground. We have taken up 

 the science because we loved it, and if we have been able to shed any light 

 on its numerous problems the work has brought its own reward. But some of 

 us liave on occasion been brought into touch with economic problems, and such 

 must have felt how inadequate was our national equipment for dealing with 

 some of tliese. In recent years we have made several beginnings, but these begin- 

 nings must expand mightily if present and future needs are to be adequately met 

 and if we are determined to make the best use of the material to our hand. 



Whether or not we have been living for the past forty years in a fools' 

 paradise, it is certain that our outlook will be widely different after the war, 

 and may the .stimulus of a changed environment find us ready to respond ! 



Sacrifice must be general, and the botanist must do his bit. This need not 

 mean giving up the pursuit of pure science, but it .should mean a heavy specialisa- 

 tion in those lines of pure science which will help to alleviate the common 

 burden, will render our country and the Empire less dependent on external 

 aid, and knit more closely its component parts. 



It may be convenient to consider, so far as they are separable. Home and 

 Imperial problems. 



Without trenching on the domain of Economics, we may assume that increased 

 production of foodstuffs, timber, and other economic products will be desirable. 

 The question has been raised as to the ]iossibility of increasing at the same 

 time industrial and agricultural development. But as in industry perfection of 

 machinery allows a greater output with a diminished number of hands, so in 

 agriculture and horticulture perfection of the machinery of organisation and 

 equipment will have the same result. 



There are three factors in which botanists are primarily interested — the 

 plant, the .soil, and the worker. 



The improvement of the plant from an economic point of view implies the 

 co-operation of the botanist and the plant-bree<ler. The student of experi- 

 mental genetics, by directing his work to plants of economic value, is able, with 

 the help of the resources of agriculture and horticulture, to produce forms of 

 greater economic value, kinds best suited to different localities and ranges of 

 climate, those most immune to disease and of the highest food-value. Let the 

 practical man formulate the ideal, and then let the scientist be invited to supply 

 it. Much valuable work has been done on these lines, but there is still plenty 

 of scope for the organised Mendelian study of plants of economic importance. 

 It is a very large subject, and we are hoping to hear more about it before 

 we separate. 



A minor example occurs to me. Do the prize vegetables which one sees at 

 shows and portrayed in the catalogues represent the best products from an 

 economic point of view ; in other words, is the standard of excellence one which 

 considers solely their value as foodstuffs? A chemico-botanical examination 

 would determine at wliat point increase in size becomes disproportionate to 

 increase in food-value, and thus correct the standard from an economic point of 



