662 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



in connection with which the burrower has been working. Such 

 appointments are of course often quite good — but at times 

 grotesque. The gentleman who has had the good fortune 

 to be declared an expert by Government often turns out to be 

 a much greater expert on other matters, such as after-dinner 

 speaking, haberdashery, waistcoats, and the general art of 

 getting on in the world. Our rulers, who are themselves dis- 

 tinguished professors in these latter lines, seem to have very 

 curious opinions about what constitutes expertness. We 

 once heard a great statesman, who is also a philosopher, 

 inveighing for half an hour against experts in general. On 

 other occasions we heard no less than two Secretaries of State 

 and also, we regret to say, a President of the Royal Society, 

 talking with enthusiasm about the great discoveries in an 

 important field of science of a man who as a matter of fact 

 had never done any researches on the subject at all and had 

 never even pretended to have done any but had merely written 

 up the researches and thoughts of others in a pretty picture- 

 book. On yet another occasion, when our worthy Government 

 did at last make up its mind to spend money on certain investi- 

 gations and had determined to appoint a paid committee for 

 superintending them, the world was astonished to find among 

 the members of this Committee the names of gentlemen who 

 had done no work of any importance in the special line con- 

 cerned. On inquiring how these gentlemen came to be 

 appointed, we were informed that an official letter had been 

 sent to the principal learned societies with a request that 

 they should nominate members for the Committee. Now the 

 writer of this note was at the time on the Council of one of 

 these learned societies, but he heard nothing whatever of this 

 circular letter ; and it transpired that the nominations had 

 been made by the officials of the Society without reference to 

 the Council. That is the way things are done ; and we as a 

 nation still hope to continue to predominate in the struggle 

 for existence between the crowded peoples of the earth. Now 

 we know that Government really has some very able experts 

 at its disposal, and we do not wish to disparage them ; but 

 in this matter, as in the whole matter of public appointments, 

 there is undoubtedly much jobbery in this country. We doubt 

 whether there is much direct bribery going on in British 

 administration, but nepotism and a curious way of doing things 



