PLANT RESEARCH

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 19897, 27 March 1939, Page 13

PLANT RESEARCH

MEW STATION OPENED VALUE OF SCIENCE NATION At > I )EY ELOPMENT MINISTERS EMPHATIC (Per Press Association.) AUCKLAND, this day. “Wherever science points, it is our job to go. Politically speaking, we must go where it points, or be lost in the struggle for existence,” said the Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. M. J. Savage, in concluding a speech at the formal opening of the administra- | tion avid laboratory building at Mount ' Albert piant research station on i Saturday. I The ceremony which marked an important stage in the process of establishing the station which has been under way for more than two years, was attended by a gathering of several hundred people, including representatives cf the Government departments, local and educational authorities and agricultural and horticultural organisations. The Director-General of Agriculture, Mr. A. H. Cockayne, presided in his capacity as director of the plant research bureau. With the Prime Minister were the Minister in Charge of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, the Hou. D. G. Sullivan, the secretary of the department. Dr. Marsden, and the director of the plant diseases division, Dr. Cunningham. Research Committee Mr. Sullivan said that the present Government, since assuming office, had pursued a steady policy designed to improve the research services of the Dominion. He described the creation in 1936 of the plant reasearch bureau committee and the organisation which had been set up in pursuance of its recommendations in order to carry out its plans for extended plant research. The Government, within the past three years, had expended a total sum of £32,164 on land, new buildings and equipment for the agronomy division (farm crops) at Lincoln, the entomology division at Nelson, the glasslands division at Palmerston North and the plant diseases division at Auckland. The expenditure at Auckland had been £2600 for land and £16,800 for buildings, and a further £6OOO would be required for the completion of the buildings and equipment needed by the different divisions. The staff of 30 comprised 14 professional, four technical, five clerical and seven field officers.

“I am proud to say that they are all New Zealanders and that the scientists are all graduates of the university of New Zealand,” added the Minister. “We are producting very fine scientists in this country. Losing Too Many

“Some of them have done magnificently abroad. If is said we are losing too many, perhaps, because we do not provide the remuneration that is obtainable elsewhere. We do not want to lose them. We want to keep them so .'that- they may contribute to the cultural and economic life of the community.” In congratulating the director, Dr. Cunningham, on the fulfilment of his hopes, Mr. Sullivan said that if scientists wore uniforms, the doctor would be entitled to 'that of a general. Dr. Cunningham expressed the thanks of himself and his division to the Government for providing the facilities, staff and equipment. Mr. Savage, after remarking humorously that if the community had no political pests, it would- have a lot more science, quoted a sentence from Dean Swift to the effect that a man who made two blades of corn or grass grow in the space of one did a more essential service to his country than the whole race of politicians put together. “Cannot Afford Not To Spend"

Labour, he added, had learned the need .for paying heed to science, and not blundering along as others had done far too much in 'the past. * “One type of political pest says that we cannot afford to spend money as we are doing here and on other research,” remarked Mr. Savage. “I say that we cannot afford not to spend it, and I join with Mr. Sullivan in hope that Mr. Walter Nash is listening. “We must watch where we are going financially, but we must pay regard -to science.” Plant life was of enormous importance to any nation and especially to New Zealand. He could give ihis assurance that the Government would .not stop at small things in developing research institutions. It realised that such work must be, carried out in many spheres. Mr. Savage then declared the station open.