1 1 8 BOTANY AND INTENSIVE CULTIVATION 



new sources of power to their use arise in the 

 springs which have origin in the remote regions 

 where pure science broods. It is within the know- 

 ledge of all who are interested either in the science 

 or in the practice of Agriculture and Horticulture, 

 that Professor Biffen has succeeded in producing 

 races of wheat which possess the virtues without 

 the defects of the parent races from which they 

 were raised. Thus the new race may possess the 

 power of resisting a disease known as rust together 

 with the capacity to yield a heavy crop. One 

 parent or ancestor rather of the new race was 

 a heavy cropper but was so highly susceptible 

 to rust that in seasons when that disease was 

 rampant its fruitfulness was impaired. The other 

 though untroubled by rust could at best yield 

 but poorly. To build up a new race uniting 

 these virtues and free from these defects would 

 seem a simple task ; and so it is ; but it required 

 half a century of scientific research before the 

 problem proposed itself, and then it required the 

 acumen of one familiar with both the science of 

 Botany and the practice of Agriculture to perceive 

 the possibility and apply the proper method of 

 solving the problem. Let it be remembered by 

 all who are concerned with the interests of the 

 nation that the role of pure science is to prophesy 

 and to propound problems. It, no less than poetry, 

 possesses the vision without which the people 

 perish. Not in the individual workers, save in 



