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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LII. No. 1344 



should be encouraged to work at whatever prob- 

 lems he wishes to attack. When a man's teach- 

 ing or other duties are sufficient to justify 

 maintaining him and yet leave him time for 

 research he is more likely to choose problems 

 which break new ground than if every research 

 has to be justified even for the reason that he 

 is paid a salary for research. 



There must in general be no restriction on 

 a man's choice of problems or on the distance 

 to which he may follow a research lead. For 

 this reason I must object to the suggestion 

 made to-day that provincial men confine them- 

 selves to problems of provincial importance 

 and that problems of wider significance be 

 reserved for the Dominion Department of 

 Agriculture. One never knows where a trail 

 is going to lead — that is one of the chief at- 

 tractions in investigation w,ork. If a worker 

 in Saskatchewan uncovers a trail which leads 

 over in Manitoba or Ontario or the States, he 

 won't stop at the boundary. The wider its sig- 

 nificance the harder he will follow it. Our 

 most important provincial problems are of 

 equal importance outside provincial boundar- 

 ies. Tou can not say to a provincial man 

 "You may study these little local questions, 

 but you must leave the big things to the Do- 

 minion men at Ottawa." Only a very mediocre 

 set of men would endure such a restriction. 



Apart from helping by cooperation in the 

 solution of practical agricultural problems, the 

 worker in a basic subject can do a great deal 

 by a judicious choice of problems and mate- 

 rials. A geneticist or plant physiologist for 

 example in attacking a fundamental problem 

 can use a crop plant of great economic value 

 just as well as the usual greenhouse plants. 

 At the same time he is likely to reveal, per- 

 haps incidentally, perhaps directly, informa- 

 tion of great practical importance concerning 

 this plant. Our scientific men could attack 

 these problems on the borderline between the 

 theoretical and the practical. They could at- 

 tack a practical problem not only for its own 

 sake but in the full expectation of ujicovering 

 a theoretical lead. In many cases in the past 

 they have not attacked practical or semi-prac- 

 tical problems partly because of ignorance 



concerning them, partly for fear of offending 

 technical colleagues. 



Another difPerence between research in agri- 

 culture and that in the other industries con- 

 cerns the remuneration of the workers. The 

 industrial research man shares, in part at 

 least, in the financial benefits which accrue 

 from his work. Great increase in wealth results 

 from the perfection of a technical invention. 

 Even if the researcher is a hired employee of a 

 corporation he shares handsomely in the benefit. 

 The industrial researcher therefore always 

 feels the powerful financial stimulus. 



The agricultural researcher, on the other 

 hand, deliberately renounces all such rewards. 

 In that respect he is like the pure scientist. 

 Though his work may result in great financial 

 benefit to his country, he knows that he will 

 profit not at all or very slightly. From the 

 nature of his work he must be attached to 

 governmental or educational institutions, and 

 he knows that the salaries in such positions 

 can never be very large. But when for the 

 sake of his work he renounces hope of becom- 

 ing wealthy, he can surely expect a reasonable 

 salary. If good researchers are to be retained 

 in and attracted to agricultural work, the re- 

 muneration must be sufficient, not to compete 

 with what other industries offer to research 

 men, but to make possible comfortable habits 

 of life. Our standard joke concerning the sal- 

 aries of teachers is unfortunately just as ap- 

 plicable to positions in which the teachers are 

 also researchers and to those in which research 

 only is carried on. 



There is another aspect of the relationship 

 between scientific research and Canadian agri- 

 cultural problems to which I must refer, 

 namely, the educational aspect. It should be 

 perfectly clear that the men who are to do 

 worth-while investigational work in agricul- 

 tural problems must have a thorough training 

 in the basic subjects as well as a broad educa- 

 tion in the languages and humanities. As I 

 have already pointed out, a thorough under- 

 standing of agricultural questions demands a 

 peculiarly broad acquaintance with many 

 fundamental subjects. The problems of agri- 

 culture involve just as complex scientific con- 



