250 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
nor has it had the success won by the fruit investigators in dealing with 
their pests. 
It is indeed not less knowledge but more knowledge that we want. 
Every country now recognises this. The United States stands easily first 
in elaboration of agricultural research, organised not only by the Govern- 
ment but by private endowment. Both in England and in the United 
States men who have made fortunes in the city have spent their money 
in developing agriculture or agricultural science—following the advice 
given by one of Plato’s people—having acquired wealth, begin to practise 
virtue. But there has been this interesting difference. The American 
patron has spent his money on a college or research station, setting 
up a laboratory or some other new building, or endowing fellowships, 
so that a succession of vigorous young people could develop the subject, 
adding also greatly to their own value as workers for agricultural 
progress. So the gift has fructified and enriched the community in 
ever-widening circles. The British patron, on the other hand, has 
usually spent his money on his own estate, making his own experiments 
in farming. Some have rendered service by carrying pedigree livestock 
over periods of depression when the commercial farmer might perforce have 
had to let them go. But many have simply experimented on no very 
definite basis and with none of the continuity essential to the success of 
agricultural investigation. While no doubt getting much amusement 
out of it themselves, they have not achieved results commensurate 
with the time and money expended, and in any case their successors 
promptly stop the whole enterprise, whether good or bad, so that the 
work soon passes out of memory. Without disputing the inalienable 
right of the Englishman to spend his money in any way he may think fit, 
and remembering, too, that the pursuit of agriculture is one of the most 
honourable ways in which a man can lose money, we can still commend 
to the English patron the wonderful possibilities of the endowment of 
agricultural research. To say nothing of Lawes and Rothamsted, think 
what the world has gained through John Quiller Rowett’s gift in 1920 
of land near Aberdeen, and of £10,000 to erect buildings, thus founding 
the Rowett Institute, and how much poorer the world would have been 
had he simply, like many another man of wealth, spent that money 
in so-called farming experiments. We in England are proud to think 
that he was an Englishman. Scotland has recently had a further 
benefaction in the Macaulay Soil Institute set up to study the peat 
soils of Scotland and to help the farmers there so long as any men 
farm in Scotland. We remember with gratitude, and we know that 
our children will do so, the names of Molteno, William Dunn, Thomas 
Harper Adams," Charles Seale-Hayne,* John Innes for their foundations in 
this country ; Peter Waite and John Melrose for the Waite Institute in 
Australia, William Macdonald for the Macdonald College in Canada,?° 
8 Left £26,640 in 1892, but this was allowed to accumulate till 1900, when it was 
worth about £40,000 ; the college was then built. 
9 This gift of £141,443 was leftin 1903, the college was built in1914, and formally 
opened in 1919. 
10 This gift of 8 million dollars in 1904 was only part of Sir William’s benefaction 
for Canada. 
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