Selective toxicity and the development of selective weed-killers.

Abstract

Chairman: Society has very kindly given me the privilege of taking the Chair on the occasion of the delivery of the first Fernhurst Lecture. As this is the first, perhaps I might be allowed to say a few words about the nature of the Lecture and how it came to be founded. Last year in London, many of you will remember, there was held one of the International Congresses on Crop Protection. In his opening address to that Congress, the President, Lord Bledisloe, gave some startling and alarming figures about the annual loss of foodstuffs through the agency of animal and vegetable pests and of diseases. In January of this year, Sir James Scott Watson, in the course of a lecture before the Farmer's Club, referred to the problem of Weed Control, and said this: The past five years have seen spectacular advances in chemical method of weed control and practical application is following close upon the heels of scientific discovery. But there is still scope for fuller use of new materials. In his opening address to which I have already referred Lord Bledisloe also referred to the lag between the discovery of new methods of dealing with pests of various kinds and their extensive application. There are various ways in which people can make efforts to close up this gap between discovery and use. It occurred to Members of the Board of Plant Protection Limited that they could make a contribution to this by endowing a lecture by a recognized authority, to be given every year on some topic in the field of the application of science to agriculture and horticulture, with special reference to the control of pests, weeds and diseases. In this field of research, more perhaps than in any other, it is essential that there should be the closest collaboration between research workers in industry, in the universities and in government establishments. You will agree that the idea of founding a lecture of this nature by a company which has its own agricultural research station known as the Fernhurst Station, and of having that lecture delivered by a very eminent university professor, is a very happy instance of such collaboration. You will now understand why this is called the Fernhurst Lecture. It is easy enough to endow a lecture, but for that lecture to do any good two things are necessary. first is that the lecture must be sponsored by some society of sufficient repute to make quite certain that people will come to listen to it or read it when it is published. Royal Society of Arts very kindly agreed to adopt this lecture; and it is very appropriate that it should have done so, because from its