562 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. VIII. No. 200. 



Before proceeding with my address I wish 

 to refer to the severe loss the British Asso- 

 ciation has sustained in the death of Lord 

 Playfair. With Sir John Lubbock and 

 Lord Rayleigh, Lord Playfair was one of 

 the permanent trustees of our Association, 

 and for many years he was present at our 

 meetings. It would be difiBcult to overrate 

 his loss to British science. Lord Playfair's 

 well-matured and accurate judgment, his 

 scientific knowledge, and his happy gift of 

 clothing weighty thoughts in persuasive 

 language, made his presence acceptable, 

 whether in the council chamber, in depart- 

 mental enquiries, or at light social gather- 

 ings, where, by the singular laws of modern 

 society, momentous announcements are 

 sometimes first given to the world. Lord 

 Playfair (then Sir Lyon Playfair) was 

 President of the British Association at 

 Aberdeen in 1885 ; his address on that oc- 

 casion will long be remembered as a model 

 of profound learning and luminous exposi- 

 tion. 



And now I owe a sort of apology to this 

 brilliant audience. I must ask you to bear 

 with me for ten minutes, for I am afraid 

 what I now have to say will prove some- 

 what dull. I ought to propitiate you, for, to 

 tell the truth, I am bound to bore you with 

 figures. Statistics are rarely attractive to 

 a listening audience ; but they are necessary 

 evils, and those of this evening are unusually 

 doleful. Nevertheless, when we have pro- 

 ceeded a little way on our journey, I hope 

 you will see that the river of figures is not 

 hopelessly dreary. The stream leads into 

 an almost unexplored region, and to the 

 right and left we see channels opening 

 out, all worthy of exploration and promis- 

 ing a rich reward to the statistic explorer 

 who will trace them to their source — a har- 

 vest, as Huxley expresses it, ' immediately 

 convertible into those things which the most 

 sordidly practical of men will admit to have 

 value, namely, money and life.' My chief 



subject is of interest to the whole world — 

 to every race, to every human being. It is 

 of urgent importance to-day, and it a life- 

 and-death question for generations to come. 

 I mean the question of food supply. Many 

 of my statements you may think are of the 

 alarmist order ; certainly they are depress- 

 ing, but they are founded on stubborn facts. 

 They show that England and all civilized 

 nations stand in deadly peril of not having 

 enough to eat. As mouths multiply, food 

 resources dwindle. Land is a limited quan- 

 tity, and the land that will grow wheat is 

 absolutely dependent on difiBcult and capri- 

 cious natural phenomena. I am constrained 

 to show that our wheat-producing soil is to- 

 tally unequal to the strain put upon it. 

 After wearying you with a survey of the 

 universal dearth to be expected, I hope to 

 point a way out of the colossal dilemma. It 

 is the chemist who must come to the res- 

 cue of the threatened communities. It is 

 through the laboratory that starvation may 

 ultimately be turned into plenty. 



The food supply of the kingdom is of pe- 

 culiar interest to this meeting, considering 

 that the grain trade has always been, and 

 still is, an important feature in the imports 

 of Bristol. The imports of grain to this 

 city amount to about 25,000,000 bushels per 

 annum, 8,000,000 of which consist of wheat. 



What are our home requirements in the 

 way of wheat? The consumption of wheat 

 per head of the pupulation (unit consump- 

 tion) is over six bushels per annum ; and 

 taking the population at 40,000,000, we re- 

 quire no less than 240,000,000 bushels of 

 wheat, increasing annually by 2,000,000 

 bushels, to supply the increase of popula- 

 tion. Of the total amount of wheat con- 

 sumed in the United Kingdom we grow 25 

 and import 75 per cent. 



So important is the question of wheat 

 supply that it has attracted the attention of 

 Parliament, and the question of national 

 granaries has been mooted. It is certain 



