SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19888, 6 March 1928, Page 8

SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH.

Evidence of practical interest in the work of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research is afforded by recent announcements of financial assistance by industries. Wheatgrowers, millers and bakers have agreed to levies at the rate of lid for every 50 bushels of wheat or ton of flour, and these should produce more than £3OOO a year toward the cost of research on lines likely to be beneficial to that industry. Similarly, the flaxmillers have consented to an increase in grading charges to provide a fund to be administered by a special board. Co-operation of this character is not only a welcome acknowledgment of the need for more scientific methods in the Dominion's primary and secondary industries, but it also affords an example that may be strongly commended to others. At the outset Parliament has sanctioned grants for research amounting to £17,250 and the Government has promised that the new department shall not languish for lack of funds. Nevertheless, it would be more satisfactory to the department and the public if the means to carry on the work of research should be chiefly furnished directly by the industries whose problems it attackß.) If this desir-

able popular interest is to be maintained, and the results of the researches are to be made conveniently available, the department should have an effective medium of communication with the public. That need seems to have been recognised in the transfer to its control of the journal of Science and Technology, which has been published for nine years under the aegis of the Department of Internal Affairs. Its production has cost only a few hundreds a year, and it would be unjust to suggest that the papers presented in successive issues have not, individually and as a whole, been valuable. But no regular reader of the journal would deny that it has failed to achieve its original purpose of creating a larger popular interest in authoritative scientific information. Its circulation has been too limited to justify any claim to the contrary. A new opportunity of useful service is now presented by its appointment as the official organ of the Research Department, and it may be hoped that it will be promptly transformed into a means of education in the methods and purposes of the department- and presently of communicating results to the public in such a form that the instruction can be practically applied.