212 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
history. Here is the peroration of an address given by Norman Lockyer 
in 1898: ‘The French Ecole Normale was the result of a revolution, I 
may now add that France since Sedan has been doing, and in a tremendous 
fashion, what . . . Prussia did after Jena. Let us not wait for disastrous 
defeats, either on the field of battle or of industry, to develop to the utmost 
our scientific establishments and so take our proper and complete place 
among the nations.’ The stress of the war soon forced lessons home, 
and amongst other things learnt was the dependence of man on the plant. 
The experience of the war was, curiously enough, not forgotten when 
peace came, with the result that the training of young botanists for 
economic work and for the investigation of definite problems became with 
time a settled policy. But other nations also have learnt the lesson, low 
living ever has been an incentive to high thinking, with the result of 
gross over-production—some prefer to call it under-consumption—of 
essential commodities such as wheat, sugar and rubber. This is mostly 
due to the unconsidered use of the great advances of applied botanical 
knowledge and of agricultural engineering without regard to economic 
consequences. The ultimate remedy may be that taken by the people 
of Erewhon, but this for the nonce is not practical politics: the present 
malady must be attacked by more research, for it is in times of economic 
depression that research is most essential. The present tendency in 
States and industries to curtail expenditure on research and expert 
knowledge is a wrong policy: ‘ They that be whole need nota physician, 
but they that are sick.’ 
Turning to other requisite crops, I am told by an expert friend that a 
world famine of soft timber may be expected in about forty years unless 
afforestation is established on a large scale, and I need not remind this 
audience that such work requires the closest co-operation between the 
forester and the botanist. Some afforesting is taking place in this country, 
but at the present rate of consumption we can never supply our own needs ; 
search must, therefore, be made for quick-growing exotic trees; if it 
could be acclimatised, Hucalyptus globosus would appear to be one such, 
for de Baufre has estimated an annual. production of 355 cubic feet of 
timber by a 20-year old tree. Substitutes for timber also must be sought. 
British railway companies are experimenting with steel sleepers, but the 
paper manufacturers, who consume many square miles of forest annually 
in the making of ‘ news print,’ have not, as far as I can discover, moved. 
Wheaten straw, of which thousands of tons are wasted annually in the 
great wheat producing countries, would appear to be a source worthy of 
investigation. 
Of other developments the cultivation of cotton in various regions of 
Africa and of fruit in South Africa, Australia, and Canada are to be 
mentioned. Then there is the banana industry and also the production of 
vegetable oils which may become of far greater importance than at present. 
The successful conduct of these and many like activities, is impossible 
without expert advice. In this country this is provided first and foremost 
by that institution of typical English origin, the Rothamsted Experimental 
Station; the schools of agriculture, horticulture and forestry of our 
Universities ; the cold storage research laboratories at Cambridge and 
South Kensington; the timber research station at Princes Risboro’ ; 
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