PROGRESS IN SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH

Waikato Times, Volume 124, Issue 20719, 1 February 1939, Page 6

PROGRESS IN SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH

Scientific research in both countries should benefit substantially from the plan evolved at the recent conference of Australian and New Zealand scientists at Sydney for the exchange of research workers and a more general pooling of effort. The plan is an extension of the arrangement under which an Australian expert has been engaged in the New Zealand Dairy Research Institute for three years. The pooling of information and the exchange of scientists will permit of the best use being made of expensive equipment and will facilitate concentration on a given problem in the area most interested.

Subjects discussed at the conference touch very intimately the everyday lives of primary producers, manufacturers and workers in all industry. One outstanding problem common to both countries is soil erosion, and here the scientists of both countries will no doubt be called upon by the governments, which are now preparing comprehensive plans for a systematic campaign of soil conservation. Animal diseases and pasture problems met with on both sides of the Tasman are receiving constant attention by expert workers, whose discoveries are too often taken for granted and not fully appreciated.

Science has rendered tremendously valuable service to Australia and New Zealand, and now, particularly in Australia, the Council of Industrial Research is looked upon as an indispensable institution. Funds are being made available to research workers much more freely than formerly, and the money spent has been proved to be a good investment. New Zealand also has produced some outstanding scientists, whose work, particularly for the primary industries, has made farming far more profitable than it otherwise could be. One recent instance of the value of the work has been the almost complete suppression of the white butterfly, which a few seasons ago threatened to destroy tile country’s vegetable and root crops.