654 State Aid for Agricultural Research, [nov., 



State funds on research. This obligation may make it 

 difficult to resist the demands of those who call for early- 

 results; but on the other hand these demands must be resisted 

 if the State is to avoid squandering its resources. Nothing 

 is more certain than that much of the best work, and the work 

 which most deserves the aid of the State, is of a kind which 

 cannot be hurried, or than that no genuine scientific worker 

 can grind out results to order. 



As a preliminary question, it may be asked what is 

 Research ? What may be included and what must be ex- 

 cluded when the time comes for discriminating between the 

 various claimants for assistance from funds provided for the 

 improvement of agriculture? A certain class of agriculturist 

 holds that all that there is to learn about agriculture must 

 be learned on a farm, another class, now perhaps more 

 numerous, but not more logical, supposes that when any 

 agricultural product is transported to a laboratory it becomes 

 then, but not till then, a subject for research. But in fact 

 the "expert" agriculturist laying out manurial plots on a 

 farm, or the chemist analysing agricultural products in his 

 laboratory, may be no more engaged in research than the 

 farm labourer, or the miller, carrying out his routine tasks. 

 In order that work may become research it must satisfy one 

 or both of two conditions (i) it must, as a result of observa- 

 tion or experiment, result in the collection of fresh facts; | 

 (2) it must involve an examination of the facts collected, 

 or phenomena observed, and the reduction of them to a form 

 in which they constitute an addition to knowledge. 



It is not usually a difficult task to distinguish research from 

 spurious imitations ; on the other hand it may at times be 

 difficult to say whether a particular piece of research is, or is 

 riot, entitled to receive aid from agricultural funds. One may 

 be permitted to express the hope that the public interested 

 will not take a narrow view on this point. Representatives of 

 the agricultural interests may at first be disposed to claim 

 that aid should be given only to those who are engaged in 

 work which is definitely agricultural ; but the effect of this 

 claim, if it were recognised, would be to restrict the field 

 from which Agriculture may expect aid and ultimately to 

 injure the industry. As the claims of Agriculture on the 



