248 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
ordinary improvements in technique, which have in the past thirty years 
so enormously increased the output that even the most extensive new 
demands of modern civilisation—rubber tyres, rubber floors—have failed 
to keep pace with supplies, so that the price, which in 1910 was 12s. 6d. 
per lb., is now reduced to 3d., and may fall still lower, causing great distress 
to the rubber growers. 
Modern science, in short, has been so successful in increasing man’s 
power over Nature that it has brought us harvests far more bountiful 
than we know what to do with. Science is still advancing, and no one 
can tell what it will achieve next. 
In these circumstances, with this plethora of the products of the soil, 
with these gifts of Nature poured upon us not merely bountifully but 
torrentially, so that many of our farmers are likely to be submerged in 
the process, one might well be tempted to ask should not the scientific 
workers halt for a time? It sounds a reasonable question and it is easily 
answered: they cannot do so even if they wished. Their purpose is to 
gain knowledge of Nature, especially of soils, crops, animals and their 
relations to one another, and in this quest there can be no halting. Three 
reasons will suffice. The march of civilisation is inextricably bound up 
with the search after knowledge, and all history shows that, when 
intellectual advancement ceases, civilisation rapidly comes to a standstill. 
The pursuit of knowledge is a human necessity ; it is part of our make-up, 
and we owe to it much of what dignity we possess. We could no more 
suppress it than we could suppress human -emotions or physical needs. 
Secondly, the knowledge so gained furnishes the only possible_material 
for agricultural education. Empiricism alone is never a sound basis; it 
may arouse, but it never satisfies, intellectual curiosity, and it does not 
open up those vistas of promising investigation which a well-designed 
experiment so often reveals, the exploration of which calls forth and 
develops some of the finest intellectual qualities in mankind. The 
necessity for agricultural education is now universally admitted; only 
the intelligent, mentally alert, well-trained farmer has much chance of 
success; and one cannot have agricultural education without constant 
research to test and expand the body of knowledge which the teacher 
imparts, ruthlessly cutting out anything false or unfounded. 
And lastly, although we may think in our pride that we have achieved 
a wonderful control over Nature, yet our control is really very limited, our 
tenure uncertain, and our margin of safety very exiguous. Crookes’ 
disquieting forecast of 1898 failed to eventuate not because it was false, 
but simply because new powers were won by mankind in the form of 
lant genetics and the internal combustion engine. How long mankind 
will have the wit to go on developing more powers we do not know ; human 
activities hitherto have gone in cycles, and it may be that the period of 
scientific activity is nearly ended. It is quite certain that any slackening 
of control or failure to utilise scientific discovery by any one group of 
cultivators would speedily eliminate them through pressure of more 
enlightened and therefore more successful competitors. It is, however, 
not so much human competition as the opposing natural agencies that 
must continuously be watched. The weather can still defeat our best 
laid farming plans. Irrigation schemes, however impressively they seem 
