26 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
its ability will justify the utmost confi¬ 
dence in it by those inclined to donate 
funds for scientific investigation. The 
heaviest financial backers of the institute 
will undoubtedly be the big American 
business interests having investments in 
Latin America. In short, the institution 
will be, in a sense, a super-university and 
a super-experiment station and its field 
of operations will embrace all of tropical 
and sub-tropical America. Have I been 
able to sufficiently express the big idea? 
The institute will doubtless have field 
stations, particularly in the countries 
south of us, but one thing is sure, there 
will be a parent station bigger than all 
the rest which will, also, presumably be 
the first one established. Where is this 
main station—the virtual headquarters 
of The Institute for Tropical Research— 
going to be located? Nobody knows, as 
yet, and right here is where Florida is 
mightily interested. In the southern por¬ 
tion of this State we have conditions suf¬ 
ficiently tropical to permit of successfully 
carrying on many, very many, of the lines 
of investigation projected by the Institute 
—and there are certain self-evident ad¬ 
vantages in having this main station un¬ 
der the flag of the good old U. S. A. I am 
satisfied that if we go at it vigorously 
we can convince the officials of the insti¬ 
tute that their headquarters should be 
right here in Florida. This much will, 
I think, be comparatively easy, but we 
must go further. In order to get this in¬ 
stitution we must make a definite offer in 
the form of land for experimental pur¬ 
poses and perhaps money for the erection 
and equipment of a building:. Onre 
these things are provided, the United 
States Department of Agriculture will be 
free, to send its various specialists to this 
field station to pursue their respective 
lines of investigation and professors and 
investigators from various Universities 
will be quick to take advantage of the. lab¬ 
oratory facilities provided. It has been 
suggested that this first or main field sta¬ 
tion should be even more than a labora¬ 
tory or experimental station and that it 
should, in fact, be also a postgraduate 
school of tropical agriculture and horti¬ 
culture, perhaps under the auspices of the 
University of Florida. I need not tell 
you what a prestige, such an arrangement 
would give to our own University. 
I am well aware that I have said just 
enough so that I should say more, but 
this I cannot do, for the institute, while 
not exactly in a formative stage, is still 
in its infancy and detailed plans for its 
operations have not yet been worked out. 
But the institute is a reality—some six¬ 
teen or seventeen big Universities have 
already associated themselves with it— 
and it is going to be located either in some 
of the countries south of us, or in Flor¬ 
ida. The question is, what are we going 
to do about it ? Are we going to let this 
opportunity slip by or are we going after 
this lusty infant and capture it before it 
gets so big that it will spurn any advances 
we may make? It is up to the people of 
Florida and I know of no more appropri¬ 
ate. agency to handle this matter than the 
State Horticultural Society, for there is no 
other organization in the State the aims 
and purposes of which are so closely akin 
of those of the Institute for Research in 
Tropical America. If the idea of getting 
this institution located in Florida appeals 
