208 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



expert, whereas the expert with trained scientific mind and possessed 

 of a fair measure of administrative abihty can direct any but a genius 

 for administration. If the work of a Government office is to be and 

 remain purely administrative no creative capacity is required, and it 

 may be left in the sure and safe and able hands of the trained adminis- 

 trator; but if the work is to be creative it must be under the direction 

 of minds turned as only research can turn them — in the direction of 

 creativeness. To the technically initiated initiation is easy and attrac- 

 tive, to the uninitiated it is difficult and repugnant. 



The useful work that such a staff as I have indicated would find 

 to do is well-nigh endless. It would become a bureau of information 

 in national horticulture, and the knowledge which it acquired would be 

 of no less use to investigators than to the industry. Diseases ravage 

 our orchards and gardens, some are known to be remediable and yet 

 persist, others require immediate and vigorous team-wise investiga- 

 tion and yet continue to be investigated by solitary workers or single 

 research institutions. 



Certain new varieties of some soft fruits are known to be better 

 than the older varieties, and yet the latter continue to be widely culti- 

 vated. The transport and distribution of perishable fruit is often in- 

 adequate — ' making a famine where abundance lies. ' The informa- 

 tion gathered in during the constant survey of the progress of Horticul- 

 ture would serve not only to direct educational effort into useful channels, 

 but to stimulate and assist research. For the headquarters staff of 

 trained men learns in the course of its administrative work many things, 

 which, albeit unknown to the researcher, are of first importance to him 

 who is bent on advancing horticultural knowledge. 



For example, it is known that the trade of raisers of seed potatos 

 for export to Jersey or Spain is in some places menaced by the presence 

 of a plot of land a mile or two away in which wart disease has appeared. 

 It may be that the outbreak occun-ed on only a single plant, yet never- 

 theless the seed-potato grower may be inhibited from exporting the 

 seed grown by him on clean land. The prohibition is just, but the man 

 who refuses to issue a licence to export, if he be a trained horticulturist 

 in touch with research, will know that there is research work to hand 

 and that immediately, and will bring the problem to the urgent notice 

 of the researchers. Thus the scientifically trained administrator be- 

 comes, although not himself witty in research, the cause of wit in 

 others. To ask the researcher, who must inevitably be to some extent 

 like Prospero ' wrapt in secret studies and to the Stat-e grown stranger, ' 

 to discover problems which arise out of administrative embarrassments 

 is unreasonable ; on the other hand, the scientifically trained administra- 

 tor acts naturally as liaison officer between the laboratory and the land, 

 passing on the problems which arise out of administrative necessities 

 or expedients. 



In this connection it is interesting to recall the fact that the im- 

 portance of the existence of varieties of potatos immune from wart 

 disease was observed years ago by an officer of the Ministry, Mr. Gough, 

 who is also a man possessed of a scientific training, and T believe 

 also that I am right in sgying that ^ithgr this, officer ,or another suggested 



