Abstract
QUITE recently a Committee, on which science was not represented, recommended curtailment of the operations of the Imperial Institute, including the closing of the public exhibition galleries, which contain representative collections of the natural products of the British Dominions and Colonies, and the reduction of its laboratory work to merely preliminary investigations. It is interesting in this connexion to see that the Dutch have opened recently a Colonial Institute in Amsterdam, which is to carry on for the Dutch Colonies work similar in type to that which the Imperial Institute has conducted for so many years for the British Empire. The new Institute is a handsome building containing excellent collections of Dutch Colonial produce, partly derived from the old Colonial Museum at Haarlem, which has been merged in the new organisation. Extensive laboratories have also been provided in which these products will be investigated systematically. The maintenance of the Institute is secured by annual grants from the Ministries of the Colonies and the Interior and the Municipality of Amsterdam. This Institute has long been under consideration in Holland, and before the War a number of the most earnest advocates for its establishment visited the Imperial Institute and accounts of the operations of the latter played a considerable part in propaganda for the opening of a similar institution in Holland. But in Holland scientific matters are dealt with by scientific men, and as a result the Dutch have, in Java and Sumatra, tropical agricultural industries, such as cinchona-planting, which other countries cannot hope to compete with, and in addition they are able in these Colonies to start the cultivation of such things as tea, rubber, and the oil palm, and by the superiority of their methods to attract British capital away from British Colonies, and to compete seriously with the latter even when their entry into the industry is belated.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Current Topics and Events. Nature 113, 245–249 (1924). https://doi.org/10.1038/113245b0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/113245b0