CHAPTER VI 
THE COTTON PLANT, ITS DEPENDENT INDUSTRIES, AND 
NATURAL SCIENCE 
By W. LAWRENCE BALLS, Sc.D. (Cantab.) 
Fine Cotton Spinners and Doublers’ Association. 
Formerly Botanist to the Khedival Agricultural Society of Egypt, etc. 
THOSE subjects of the State who are scientists by 
training, and still more those younger scientists who 
are seeking a useful career, can only be very thankful 
that a national conviction with regard to scientific 
method and result has at last been awakened. But 
since this conviction is hasty, largely Press-made, and 
is not based on real acquaintance with experimental 
methods, it will not easily be transformed into working 
practice. : 
Such transformation will be hardest in the domain of 
pure science—which, fortunately, is less expensive than 
industrial research—because the economic application 
of its incidental discoveries must of necessity be uncon- 
ventional. This, too, is the happy hunting-ground of 
the charlatan. ~ 
The transformation is easiest on the fringe of working 
practice, where minor difficulties, which arise day by 
day, are demonstrably most easily solved by trained 
men. Here the immediate practical utility of the 
scientist is as obvious as that of a telephone or of a 
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