12 THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS, 



to their exploitation, to provide, whether in State institutions or in uni- 

 versity and other laboratories, for the pursuit of the necessary researches, 

 to co-ordinate the work, and to ensure the dissemination of knowledge 

 acquired. The nature of the researches themselves is conditioned to a 

 large extent (though by no means wholly) by geographical circumstances 

 in the respective territories : agricultural, pastoral, and forestry problems, 

 for example, are not identical in all of them, and that very fact adds to 

 the interest and value of co-ordinating the results of research work 

 throughout the Empire. While problems may difEer, solutions may 

 point to a common end. Nothing but good can follow from personal 

 contact between scientific workers in different parts of the Empire. Nothing 

 but good can follow from their researches if they add, as gradually they 

 must add, to the wider knowledge of the Empire not only among the 

 workers themselves, but ultimately among the whole body of informed 

 Imperial citizenship ; not only in the overseas territories, but here at 

 home. For us at home the Empire is worth knowing. Our knowledge 

 of it begins with the school lessons in geography and history — or should 

 do so ; no doubt the ideal here is yet to be attained. Such knowledge 

 may become later of vital importance to those who wish to join the stream 

 of overseas migration. The British Association, in pursuit of its policy 

 of obtaining from time to time ' reports on the state of science ' in one 

 department or another, has recently, through a committee of the Section 

 of Educational Science, been collecting evidence as to the facilities existing 

 in our schools for training boys and girls for life overseas. In the crowded 

 curriculum of most schools these facilities, at any rate in their particular 

 Imperial application, are not conspicuous. Yet any labour which time 

 allows us to spend, whether in school days or after them, upon the advance- 

 ment of scientific knowledge of the Empire, of the means and manner and 

 environment of life in its component territories, must be well spent. The 

 British Association has played its part in this advancement since, in 1 884, 

 it admitted the principle and established the practice of holding occasional 

 meetings overseas. Those of our members who travelled from this 

 country to take part in these meetings have had peculiar opportumties 

 to meet and discuss each his own scientific problems with fellow-workers 

 in the Dominions — and it should be added with particular reference to 

 those meetings which have been held in Canada that they have provided 

 almost unique opportunities for personal contact between British workers 

 in science and their American colleagues. Our travelling members have 

 been able to see how science is cultivated in the universities of the 



