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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLY. No. 1174 



I wish now to indicate, by a single illus- 

 tration, how such an institution as this may 

 become a great laboratory for public serv- 

 ice. My illustration is intended only to 

 indicate how fundamental research is of 

 the greatest service to public welfare, a 

 source of energy to be called upon and ap- 

 plied as needs arise. It is not intended to 

 indicate the specific kind of work that any 

 given garden should undertake; this may 

 well vary, but it is a good illustration of 

 the value of research work in general. 



I have indicated the problem of food pro- 

 duction that our nation is facing to-day. 

 In some way our food production must 

 overtake our population. Over a century 

 ago certain men were speculating about evo- 

 lution. The subject of evolution was not a 

 science, because men were meditating 

 rather than investigating. Certainly noth- 

 ing could have seemed farther removed 

 from general human interest than this spec- 

 ulation. About a century ago speculation 

 about evolution merged into the science of 

 evolution when men began to observe the 

 facts upon which such a theory could be 

 based. For a century, observation and in- 

 ference went on until they had reached the 

 limit of usefulness. Near the beginning of 

 this century, men concluded that the only 

 way to secure further progress was to test 

 by experiment whether one kind of plant 

 could actually produce another kind. In 

 observing the behavior of plants in breed- 

 ing, they began to uncover the laws of he- 

 redity; and as knowledge of these laws in- 

 creased, it became evident that this knowl- 

 edge could be applied to the practical 

 handling of plants, and what we call our 

 revolution in agriculture followed. It is a 

 far cry from a speculation about evolution 

 to the solution of our food problem, but the 

 continuity is unbroken. It is by such essen- 

 tial and generally unrecognized service that 

 scientific research is contributing to human 



welfare. I wish to be more specific and to 

 indicate some of the ways in which science 

 has solved this food problem. 



Through scientific work in the study of 

 heredity, we have learned to multiply the 

 races of our useful plants so that they may 

 fit in more exactly to the variable condi- 

 tions in which plants must be grown. It is 

 a curious fact that we have been blind so 

 long to the teaching of nature that condi- 

 tions for plants are not the same every- 

 where. We have always realized that the 

 natural vegetation of this country is not a 

 monotonous covering. Every change in 

 vegetation indicates a special set of condi- 

 tions for plant growth, and yet we have 

 been trying to grow the same races of plants 

 everywhere. The result has been that we 

 have gotten maximum returns from some 

 areas, minimum returns from others, and 

 medium returns from the rest. Our total 

 result has been an average. By multiply- 

 ing races of plants to fit conditions more 

 closely, our total result will not be an aver- 

 age, but a maximum everywhere. This one 

 suggestion of science will double our pro- 

 duction. 



One of the most destructive enemies of 

 our crops is drought. On the average our 

 production is cut in half by this enemy. 

 Scientific investigation has shown that it is 

 possible to develop drought-resistant races 

 of all our useful plants. This means the 

 possibility, not only of insuring our crops 

 against drought where they are now culti- 

 vated, but also of increasing enormously 

 the area of cultivation, by adding the so- 

 called arid regions of perpetual drought. 



Another destructive enemy of our valu- 

 able crops is disease. The government has 

 expended millions of dollars in the study 

 of plant diseases, in the hope of reducing 

 the loss. The scientific work of recent years 

 has shown that it is possible to breed dis- 

 ease-resistant races. Plants, like hmnan 



