NOTES 489 



the vast majority of cases." Why, we ask, because a man 

 happens to be endowed with genius, should he therefore lack the 

 means of subsistence ? Is genius a sin for which poverty is a 

 fitting punishment ? Surely the old saying is in nowise dis- 

 proved that the labourer is worthy of his hire. Unlike most 

 writers who are apt in searching out evils and modestly retire 

 when asked to provide a remedy, Mr. Robertson is ready with 

 a panacea. He shows us that " as members of the body politic, 

 we can assist the development of science in two ways. Firstly, 

 by doing each our individual part towards ensuring that endow- 

 ment for the university must provide not only for ' teaching 

 adolescents the rudiments of Greek and Latin ' and erecting 

 imposing buildings, but also for the furtherance of scientific 

 research," and secondly by resorting to the expedient of the 

 " collection of a tax upon the profits accruing from inventions 

 (which are all ultimately if indirectly results of scientific ad- 

 vances) and the devotion of the proceeds from this tax to the 

 furtherance of research." This, he concludes, " would not only 

 be a policy of wisdom in the most material sense, but it would 

 also be a policy of bare justice." 



Economy 



Every individual knows how difficult it is to alter a wrong 

 train of thought after it has once crystallised into habit, and 

 that the only way to eradicate such an evil is to cast it out 

 before the stage of petrifaction. And yet how seldom is this 

 applied by bodies of men, in Committees, Departments of State, 

 and the nation at large. There has lately been a most striking 

 example of this in the treatment meted out to Prof. Bottomley 

 by the Board of Agriculture. Mr. W. B. Bottomley, Professor 

 of Botany and Vegetable Biology, King's College, has, by his 

 discovery of bacterised peat, 1 made it possible to double the 

 production of our food supply, and one would have thought 

 that the refusal of the Board of Agriculture to avail itself of 

 such a well-timed boon would have been impossible. That this 

 discovery will be utilised in England is due entirely to Prof. 

 Bottomley's patriotism in refusing all offers of high emolument 

 from German sources. In his lecture delivered at the Royal 

 Botanic Society, October 18, he narrated how a German took 

 the trouble to visit him and try to obtain the result of his genius 



1 See Prof. Keeble's review on page 520. 

 32 



