1922.] Institute of Agricultural Botany. 1073 



research. Bothamsted has been the model on which all similar 

 research stations throughout the world have based their con- 

 stitutions, and has never lost the lead which these two great 

 men afforded it in the investigation of problems connected with 

 the soil and its manuring. Thus it is only just that this country 

 should now be able to recover from abroad a portion of the 

 debt thus created. 



England had long been satisfied to rely on her acknowledged 

 lead in soil and manurial science to maintain her position as 

 the producer of the highest yields per acre of any country in 

 the world. Naturally a degree of improvement had gradually 

 taken place in the productivity of the crops themselves, but 

 until a comparatively recent date work on these lines was left 

 entirely to the competitive efforts of the seed-trade or the 

 more or less chance discoveries of amateurs. New varieties 

 were thrown on to the market to sink or swim as fortune 

 dictated — it could not be otherwise, for yield testing is even 

 now in its infancy. Yet at this early stage the one definite 

 fact emerges that only trials carried out on a scale beyond the 

 capacity of any private undertaking can produce results on 

 which reliance can be placed. The value of varieties was 

 necessarily determined by purchasers who established, by the 

 costly system of trial and error, what was, and what was not, 

 worth retaining in cultivation. 



Such, in fact, was the position in England when the Great 

 War broke out. With the War came 'the realisation that the 

 life of the nation depended on its crops, and that every possible 

 method of increasing the food production of the country must 

 be exploited if it were to survive the ordeal. 



Objects and Policy. — Sir Lawrence W 7 eaver, then in the Food 

 Production Department of the Ministry of Agriculture, thought 

 that the most hopeful line of attack on this problem was 

 to concentrate on the improvement of the national seed supply. 

 Not only did he contemplate insuring an adequate supply of 

 pure healthy seed, but he wished to provide a stimulus, which 

 should induce increased production and rapid distribution of 

 improved varieties of our "agricultural plants, so that the land 

 should be used to the greatest possible advantage. The result 

 was his scheme for a National Institute of Agricultural Botany. 



With such an aim in view it is natural that he should turn 

 for guidance to that great Swedish station — Svalof — where 

 work of this kind had been in progress since 1886. The con- 

 ditions were not parallel, but the line of intersection lay some 



B 



