244 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
reputation by predicting the limit to Canada’s future accomplishments. 
The result of the new methods is, according to Mr. Peterson, that wheat 
can already be produced at 43 cents per bushel, or 14s. per quarter (at 
25 bushels per acre), and the cost can be further reduced. 
Australia also has developed as the result of the activities of the plant 
breeder and the engineer; the problem here was the conquest of the 
drought. Farrer began by producing wheats more resistant to rust and 
drought than the older sorts, and his pupils, Sutton and others, have 
continued the work. Agriculturists showed the great value of super- 
phosphates for all crops; they further improved the methods of cultiva- 
tion, and now, as A. BE. V. Richardson has shown, for each inch of rain 
falling during the season, the farmers of Victoria obtain one bushel of 
wheat, while forty years ago they obtained only half a bushel; further 
improvement is possible, for with perfect utilisation of the rain one inch 
should yield 3-5 bushels of wheat. Every new improvement enables the 
wheat grower to push the wheat belt a little further into the drier inland 
region, just as in Canada it enables him to push a little further into the 
northern regions of shorter summers. Some of the most striking agri- 
cultural developments of modern times have been in Western Australia. 
South Africa owes much of its advances to two other branches of 
biological science—veterinary science and parasitology. No part of the 
white man’s habitation seems so suitable for insects, and especially parasites, 
as South Africa. So long as the white man occupied the country only 
thinly he could do it without difficulty, but trouble began as soon as he 
wished to increase his hold on the land and multiply his flocks and herds. 
The first to attack the problem seriously was Arnold Theiler. It is 
difficult to overrate the value of the service he has rendered to South 
Africa as a country, and to farm animals the whole world over. He 
began at the time of the rinderpest plague of 1895, a virus disease which 
lulled almost the entire cattle population of South Africa; the country 
was also devastated by horse sickness, blue tongue of sheep, heartwater 
of cattle, sheep and goats, and other terrible diseases. With almost 
uncanny precision he diagnosed the causes of these diseases and discovered 
curative measures ; he founded the Vetermary Research Laboratories at 
Onderstepoort, of which not only South Africa but the whole Empire is 
proud, and he trained up a body of veterinary research workers and 
- officers who now, under the distinguished leadership of P. J. du Toit, are 
extending the good work. Dr. du Toit, in his brilliant presidential address 
to this section last year, set out the history and present position of the 
achievements in veterinary science. These discoveries have had their 
counterpart in the veterinary services of India and other countries, and 
animal diseases are now much more under control than they were. 
However, the task never ends, for as soon as one disease is controlled 
another seems to rise into prominence. We are still far from security ; 
in the past twelve years foot and mouth disease has cost the British 
Government over 54 million pounds sterling paid to the farmers of Great 
Britain as compensation for animals compulsorily slaughtered, while the 
farmers themselves have suffered vastly more. Veterinary research is now 
developing in this country at Cambridge and elsewhere, and the relation- 
ships between nutrition and disease are studied at the Rowett Institute. 
