238 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



of co-operation in research by Governments, and from the desire for 

 co-operation in research on the part of the workers. The structure is 

 an arrangement for the assistance of research, not a frame in which to 

 fit it. 



The problem which these organisations have been created to help to 

 solve may arise in various ways. It would be easy to mention many 

 outstanding Imperial problems, but assuming that some individual 

 research worker in some corner of the Empire has seen or shed new light 

 on some obscure point, what is his happy condition to-day compared 

 with twenty years ago ? Through the bureaux or clearing centres of 

 information, he can mobilise all the existing knowledge bearing on his 

 point. Armed with this knowledge, he sees that the scope of the required 

 research is far beyond his individual powers. If he is in one of the 

 Dominions he can put his case before the Department of Agriculture or, 

 it may be, before the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research 

 of his Government. The Department can bring together the best brains 

 available to consider and report upon the necessary research, or in the 

 case of Great Britain and the Colonies, the Committee of Civil Research 

 can undertake the inquiry. A plan of campaign is ultimately worked 

 out. The Empire Marketing Board is approached and the funds. jointly 

 provided by the Board and the Dominion or Colony chiefly concerned. 

 The men are then selected, possibly from the whole Empire, and seconded 

 for the work, the locus is decided upon and the attack begins. In this 

 case the problem has originated through the vision of one individual. 



Take another case, where the problem originates at the other end of 

 the scale. Take a simple illustration. Suppose, and this is probably 

 true, that the sheep on the hill grazings of Scotland and England have 

 diminished by one-third in fifty years. The Agricultural Administrator 

 concerned appeals to the Research Institutes. They reply that there 

 are probably half a dozen factors contributing to the decrease. Then 

 follows the inquiry, the suggested plan of campaign, the funds, the men, 

 and the attack. Yet out of such an investigation may arise the 

 information which will enable principles of general application to be 

 determined regarding sheep and pastures over half the world. Here the 

 administrator has set the ball a-roUing. 



But the politician, or to give him a worthier name, the Statesman, 

 is not out of the swim. Let us suppose that South Africa wishes to take 

 a large share in the supply of chilled beef and mutton to the great industrial 

 centres of England. Immediately there arises a problem economical, 

 genetical, nutritional, pathological and botanical, which can only be 

 solved by the combined operations of a number of scientific and business 

 men working together. 



Finally, there is another way in which the problems may arise. That 

 is through the deliberations of a long range thinking body not concerned 

 with the problems of to-day or even the immediate to-morrow, but with 

 research which has no present relation to agricultural practice but which 

 may prove a fertile source of lines of investigation ultimately of the first 

 importance to agriculture. 



We have then available organisations or machinery capable of doing 

 great things for the development of the Empire. Already much has been 



