242 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
accurate, and there can be no doubt that, had science and practice stood 
still since 1898, we should now be facing the horrors of world starvation. 
But they have not stood still, and the present position of farm prices is 
a measure of their advancement. 
Two new and closely, linked factors have come into play since 1898 
and are largely responsible for the present position: the widening of the 
scope of science in agriculture and the agricultural development of the 
British Empire and of South America. In the nineteenth century 
agriculture had been mainly a branch of chemistry; its professors had 
been chemists, its laboratories chemical. Crookes suggested more 
chemistry as the way out of what he called the ‘ colossal dilemma ’ of world 
starvation ; he proposed the manufacture of more nitrogenous fertilisers 
from the air—a fantastic idea at the time, yet now our chief source of 
supply. 
The new scientific developments came from the biological side, and 
the new practical developments from the engineering side. The first 
great biological triumphs were in plant breeding. There had always been 
an empirical art of plant breeding and selection which had given to farmers 
in the nineteenth century the Hallett barleys, Browick, Red Standard 
and other good wheats, Magnum Bonum potatoes, and sugar-beets of 
successively higher sugar content ; but the results came by accident and 
not by design. With the discovery of Mendel’s laws and the development 
of the science of plant genetics, the production of new varieties was largely 
under control; within limits the breeder could work to a specification 
with considerable hopes of success. The greatest success has been achieved 
in producing varieties with some special quality such as drought resistance, 
shortened growing period or stiffer straw; this has proved far more 
fruitful than the quest for generally improved varieties. For by developing 
some special quality it has been found possible to cultivate the crop in 
regions where the older varieties would not grow. 
Animal breeding is following the same lines: the empirical work of 
Robert Bakewell of Dishley, John Ellman of Glynde, the Collins brothers 
and a host of others, has given us our unrivalled breeds of livestock. 
Crew and his colleagues at Edinburgh are now introducing the science of 
genetics into the industry: they have made a promising stat: let us 
hope they will achieve as great results as their colleagues have done 
with plants. 
Canada affords some of the best examples of the plant breeder’s success 
in opening up new regions of the world for settlement. Up to the middle 
of the nineteenth century the Canadian wheats were suited only to the 
eastern provinces, Ontario and Quebec; they were uncertain on the 
prairies. About 1842 David Fife, in Ontario, received for trial from a 
Glasgow friend several packets of wheat which he sowed. Among the 
resulting plants was one that differed entirely from the rest, and also 
escaped damage from rust and frost, two destroyers of wheat in those 
times. How the seed got there, or whence it came, can never be known. 
It was a Galician variety. But the accident was a fortunate one for 
Canada, and did much to build up her wealth. The wheat plant was so 
good that Fife saved the seed and multiplied it, and in course of time it 
was widely taken up by farmers under the name of Red Fife. It proved 
