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M.—AGRICULTURE. 257 
least as important as the feeding of the crop. This fact had of course been 
fully recognised in the English experiments, but the English farmer was 
so skilled in cultivation that he could be taught but little by science. 
The early American work as developed by Kedzie at Michigan, King at 
Wisconsin, Hilgard, and Whitney, was largely physical, and it greatly 
widened the outlook of agricultural investigators, opening the way to the 
extensive physical and physico-chemical studies which have now become 
so characteristic a feature of American work. The French investigators, 
particularly Schloesing, Muntz, Berthelot, and Déhérain, and the brilliant 
Russian, Winogradsky, then in Paris, revealed a new world of soil micro- 
organisms, the wonder and mystery of which appealed to the imagination 
of the younger workers in a way that none of the older utilitarian work 
had done. The Germans methodically explored the fields thus opened 
up; Hellriegel and Wollny accumulated a mass of data as to plant 
growth and soil changes which still remains of value to the student. These 
pioneers were succeeded by a host of followers whom it would be impossible 
to enumerate at length, and from whom it would be invidious to select a 
_ few. Moreover, the chemists and physicists of the old school were no longer 
left in sole possession ; van Bemmelen introduced the conception of colloids, 
and at a later date Mitscherlich, Baule, and others developed the idea of 
mathematical expressions for the data of agricultural science. Sachs and 
his pupils in Germany, Déhérain, Maquenne and Demoussy in France, 
joined up the new science of plant physiology with agricultural science. 
The plant breeder also came in ; Gregor Mendel’s work, after lying hidden 
for forty years, was revealed to the world by Bateson and was at once turned 
to agricultural use in England by one of Marshall Ward’s pupils, R. H. 
Biffen ; and in the United States by Webber and others. The selection 
method was developed to a high pitch of perfection in Canada by William 
Saunders, a revered leader in our science, whose dignified presence and 
kindly words of greeting remain as a vivid recollection of our visit fifteen 
years ago. His mantle has fallen on his son Charles, who has continued 
and developed the work. 
The result of all this effort has been the accumulation of an enormous 
mass of information covering a very large part of the field witli which 
agriculture has to deal. It has been essentially a pioneer period, with 
all the advantages of keen individual interest, controversy, sometimes 
even of excitement; but also with the disadvantages of a certain lack of 
perspective, failure to follow up important issues and some narrowness of 
_ outlook inevitable when a single individual is working alone at a great 
subject. 
Generalisations that have emerged. 
But in spite of these drawbacks several important generalisations have 
emerged. One of the most pregnant in possibilities for the future is the 
_ recognition that the plant is a very plastic organisation and can be modified 
_ toa considerable extent within certain limits. Two methods are adopted : 
breeding, which may be on observational lines or on the Mendelian method 
of picking out the desired unit characters from plants in which they occur 
and assembling them in a new plant; and selection, in which a desirable 
_ plant is caused to produce seed from which stocks are multiplied. The 
Scientific problems fall within the province of the science of genetics ; 
1924 8 
