March, 1912.] 



245 



Mi8cellane6ua 



suggested that iustead of turning their 

 nephews and sons into clerks, landhold- 

 ers might well devote attention to the 

 honourable occupation which agricul- 

 ture offers. It was pointed out at the 

 Conference that an efficient estate 

 manager must be at once a man of 

 business and an agriculturist. A practi- 

 cal man who kept himself in line with 

 the latest agricultural developments 

 would be of value not merely to his 

 employer but to India. The cultivator 

 though conservative is by no means 

 averse from adopting new methods when 

 he is convinced of their efficacy, and the 

 educated classes have a great held open 

 to them in this direction if they willingly 

 avail themselves of it. India has already 

 given some idea of her agricultural poten- 

 tialities by the enormous shipments of 

 cotton, wheat, seeds, jute, tea and other 

 products which have been proceeding 

 for a number of years past. There is 

 great scope for further development. In 

 this work the classes which now seek to 

 enter professions that are already over- 

 crowded might participate with profit 

 to themselves and advantage to the 

 country, It is evident, moreover, that 

 unless certain agricultural industries are 

 to be prejudiced in the foreign markets, 

 the cultivator and those who deal with 



him will have to be taught the folly of 

 endeavouring to supplement their legiti- 

 mate profits by illicit gains. Mr. W. G. 

 Bevis, who spoke at the Allahabad Con- 

 ference as a manufacturer of cotton yarn 

 and fabrics, affirmed that the dishonest 

 practices which prevailed tended to 

 throw discredit on Indian trade in 

 general and Indian cotton in particular. 

 He had found, he said, the dead bodies 

 of small animals in the bales. " I have 

 also found," he added, "bricks enough 

 to pave a small courtyard, also large 

 heavy stone boulders from the Berars. 

 This is exceptional, but when I have to 

 pay the price of cotton for stones and 

 brick 1 feel annoyed .... The more 

 usual adulterations are, howevei, sand, 

 cotton seed, and damp — the latter in the 

 form of water is, 1 understand, habitu- 

 ally added by many of the cotton presses 

 in Berar to add weight." The British 

 Commercial Attache at Pekin, as we 

 pointed out recently, reports that the 

 watering of cotton by the Chinese threat- 

 ens to lead to the exclusion of Chinese 

 cotton from the markets of the world. 

 Malpractices in India must have a similar 

 tendency, and it is desirable that men of 

 education with souud ideas of commer- 

 cial ethics should be induced to become 

 interested in the industry. 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



THE SPIRIT OF AGRICULTURAL 

 INVESTIGATION. 



(Prom the Agricultural Netos, Vol. X., 

 No. 247, October 14, 1911.) 



Those who are responsible for agricul- 

 tural investigation and experiment- 

 ation at the present time are faced by 

 the fact that the field over which their 

 energies may be expended has largely 

 widened in recent years. Agricultural 

 problems are no longer regarded as 

 being comparatively small in their 

 scope and simple in their nature. They 

 require the assistance of many of the so- 

 called branches of science. The help of 

 the chemist, the botanist, the plant 

 pathologist and physiologist, the ento- 

 mologist, the geologist and the physi- 

 cist, large as it is, does not exhaust the 

 amount of aid that is needed by the 

 agricultural investigator. 



This circumstance has led to the 

 existence of the worker who specializes 

 in one or two of the many matters that 

 must receive attention for the elucid- 

 ation of agricultural problems. He does 

 not necessarily go into the field, nor 



need he be an agriculturist in the ordin 

 ary sense of the term. His work may 

 be purely academic, nevertheless, it is 

 required by the practical experimenter, 

 who has not the time, and probably 

 does not possess the knowledge, to enter 

 into specialized scientific investigations. 

 Further, the attitudes of the two kinds 

 of workers are different : the specialist 

 directs his gaze towards what is waiting 

 to be found out, while the maker of 

 agricultural experiments gives his atten- 

 tion to results already obtained, in 

 order that they may be endowed with a 

 practical value. 



"While the latter kind of investigator 

 is a user of existing results, it is the 

 purpose of his work; as has been indi- 

 cated, to emply these for obtaining 

 others that are applicable on a larger 

 scale. He must, therefore, be in posses- 

 sion of a definite scheme of working. It 

 is his duty, also, thoroughly to master 

 the necessary preliminaries before he 

 proceeds to put any scheme into oper- 

 ation. An important matter among 

 such preliminaries is the gaining of an 

 adequate knowledge of what has al- 

 ready been discovered in relation to the 



