Country Life
GOLF AND RESEARCH.
IT is the duty of every golfer to offer to help his Union in the new and delightful scheme for research on which many small clubs are to vote immediately, and I do not know why cricket- ers, tennis players, and bowlers should not 6o-operate. The committee of every golf club has received a request to subscribe a small sum annually for the endowment of scientific research into the inwardness of the green and the fairway. We all know Tennyson's neat little parable about the " flower in the crannied wall " that contains the whole secret of the universe if we could but find out all about it. The grass on the green is an even better epitome ; but Sir Robert Greig, who is the guiding spirit of the new Research Committee, says we know little about it that is worth knowing. " In the vast majority of cases, the knowledge of how to make the best of the soil, the grasses, and the climate is unknown to green committees and greenkeepers, for the simple reason that the knowledge ddes not exist." Hence the new research committee, on which will serve six of our greatest authorities on agricultural biology. It is a pleasant idea that golfers should endow a work that will benefit the world in
• general, the field not less than the green. For though the ideal of a heavy hay crop or good grazing and of a shaved green or fairway may seem opposed, the science of selection, of manuring, and of the influence of climate and soil lies in a common cause. Suppose the golfer makes the farmers' fortune !' A more surprising thing might happen.
* * * * ENGLISH GRASS.
Previous page
