M.—AGRICULTURE. 215 
amount of this practical experimental work, which consists chiefly of 
feeding tests, should be carried out by the stock-farmer. He has not only 
the necessary large groups of animals to work with, but also a knowledge 
of practical conditions which is not possessed by the laboratory research 
worker. This work is indeed, to some extent, already being carried out 
on farms, but there must be an increasing amount of co-operation between 
research worker and farmer in carrying out such feeding tests. 
Though this practical experimental work is important because it may 
yield results of immediate economic value, yet with regard to the future 
it is not more important than academic research. Valuable results 
are likely to be yielded by further investigations being carried out on the 
interactions of colloids and inorganic ions, on the influence of the electrical 
charge and chemical characteristics of the ion on these reactions, on the 
effects of radiant energy on the processes associated with mineral meta- 
bolism, and on the relationship of these to both normal and pathological 
processesin the body. In this region, which we have only begun to explore, 
there seems to lie the key to the solution of many obscure problems, both 
of the normal metabolism of health and the abnormal metabolism of 
disease. Fortunately for agricultural science and, indeed, for all the sciences 
which deal with life in any of its forms, this field of investigation will 
never lack workers. The subjects of investigation are the basic phenomena 
of life, and these will always attract that intense interest which stimulates 
to further and still further efforts to get closer to those ultimate truths 
which indeed may never be reached but the pursuit of which yields 
information of inestimable value to mankind. 
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