2(04 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



produce no more and indeed less to the acre than do the large farmers 

 who are their neighbours. 



Befoi-e making any attempt to estimate the worth of these rival 

 opinions it may be observed that the war has brought a large reinforce- 

 ment of sti'ength to the rank of the optimists. A contrast of personal 

 experiences illustrates this fact. When in the early days of the war 

 I felt it my duty to consult certain important county officials with the 

 object of securing their support for schemes of intensive food production, 

 i carried away from the conference one conclusion only : that the 

 counties of England were of two kinds, those which were already doing 

 much and were unable therefore to do more, and those which were 

 doing little because there was no more to be done. In spite of this close 

 application of the doctrine of Candide — that all is for the best in the 

 best of all possible worlds — I was able to set up some sorb of county 

 horticultural organisation, scrappy, amateurish, but enthusiastic, and 

 the work done by that organisation was on the average good ; so much 

 so indeed that when after the Armistice I sought to build up a per- 

 manent county horticultural organisation I was met by a changed 

 temper. The schemes which the staff of the Horticultural Division had 

 elaborated as the result of experience during the war were received 

 and adopted with a cordiality which I like to think was evoked no less 

 by the excellence of the schemes themselves than by the promise of 

 liberal financial assistance in their execution. Thus it came about that 

 when the time arrived for me to hand over the controUership of Horti- 

 culture to my successor, almost every county had established a strong 

 County Horticultural Committee, and the chief counties from the point 

 of view of intensive cultivation had provided themselves with a staff 

 competent to demonstrate not only to cottagers and allotment holders, 

 but also to smallholders and commercial growers, the best methods of 

 intensive cultivation. In the most important counties horticultural 

 superintendents with knowledge of commercial fruit-growing were being 

 appointed, and demonstration fruit and market-garden plots, designed 

 on lines laid down by Captain Wellington and his expert assistants, 

 were in course of establishment. The detailed plans for these links 

 in a national chain of demonstration and trial plots have been published, 

 and anyone who will study them will, I believe, recognise that they 

 point the way to the successful development of a national system of 

 intensive cultivation. 



By means of these county stations the local cultivator may learn 

 how to plant and maintain his fruit plantation and how to crop his 

 vegetable quarters, what stock to run and what varieties to grow. 



Farm stations — with the Eesearch stations established previously 

 by the Ministry ; Long Ashton and East Mailing for fruit investigations ; 

 the Lea Valley Growers' Association and Rothamstead for investigation 

 of soil problems and pathology; the Imperial College of Science for 

 research in plant physiology, together with a couple of stations, con- 

 templated before the war, for local investigation of vegetable cultiva- 

 tion; an alliance with the Eoyal Horticultural Society's Eesearch 

 Station at Wisley, and with the John Innes Horticultural Institute for 

 research in genetics ; the Ormskirk Potato Trial Station ; a Poultry 



