48 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Scholarships. Next we have the resources of our universities, which 

 have scarcely begun to apply themselves to the task. I need do no 

 more than allude to the Cavendish Laboratory, or to the Physiological 

 School at Cambridge, where a simple college tutor of i-are ability, and 

 of still more rare sympathy and energy, has in ten years achieved 

 results which we need not shrink from comparing with those of the 

 great Continental laboratories. The magnificent Museum of Anatomy, 

 maintained by the College of Surgeons almost entirely out of their 

 own funds, is another instance of private care for science to which we 

 find no parallel abroad ; and the Zoological Society wisely spends a 

 large part of its income in prosecuting comparative anatomy, and in 

 publishing its beautifully illustrated memoirs. 



But besides the efforts of scientific bodies and the wealth of our 

 national universities, we may surely look to the public spirit of ancient 

 companies and corporations to do something for the cause of science. 

 In the middle ages our country was covered with parish churches by 

 private munificence ; in the sixteenth century most of our public and 

 grammar schools were endowed ; in later times our great religious and 

 charitable societies were founded. May we not hope that, before the 

 close of the present century, the discriminating knowledge which alone 

 prevents gifts of money from being a curse instead of a blessing to a 

 community, may lead to the establishment of libraries, and museums, 

 and laboratories by universities and towns, which shall bear compari- 

 son, I will not say with those of Paris, or Leipsic, or Bonn, but with 

 the poorer but scarcely less distinguished schools of Heidelberg and 

 Gottingen, of Wiirzburg and of Utrecht ? 



Where we have institutions already under government control and 

 patronage, let them be maintained as efficiently and liberally as pos- 

 sible. The British Museum, and its library, the Royal Observatory at 

 Greenwich, and the Royal Gardens at Kew (happily preserved for the 

 present from the short-sighted eagerness of those who would destroy 

 their scientific value) — these are great national institutions of which we 

 are justly proud. Successive governments will have enough to do to 

 maintain their efficiency and to guard them from incompetent inter- 

 ference. 



Whatever may be thought of the duty of the state directly to en- 

 courage the pursuit of animal and vegetable physiology, one would 

 have supposed that at least what diplomatists call a benevolent neu- 

 trality would be shown to a pursuit so laborious and costly, which 

 demands trained workmen and the devotion of a lifetime, which is so 

 important for the national wealth and health, and which, by reason, 

 by experience, and by testimony, we know to be the only guarantee 

 for advance in the various branches of the healing art. Why is it 

 then that institutions which owe nothing to government assistance, 

 and men who spend their time and talents in self-denying and unre- 



