22 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



with tliis^ the defenders of the present regime would point out, in 

 addition, that there are other English institutions where the poorer 

 classes may be educated, that Cambridge and Oxford are not only 

 not bound to take upon themselves this task, but that they actually 

 subserve a higher purpose and one just as necessary to the develop- 

 ment of English science and letters and to the education of the 

 English intellect by specializing in another direction. The good of 

 a philosopher's lifelong reflections, they would say, is not always 

 manifest, but the teachers who instruct the nation's youth are 

 themselves dependent for rational standpoints upon the labor of 

 the greater teacher, and they act as the instruments of communi- 

 cation between the most learned and the unlettered. So Oxford 

 and Cambridge are the sources from whose fountains of wisdom 

 and culture flow streams supplying all the academic mills of Brit- 

 ain, which in their turn are enabled to feed the inhabitants. It 

 would be absurd, they maintain, to insist that the streams and the 

 mills could equally well fulfill the same functions. Cambridge 

 and Oxford instruct just so far as so doing is compatible with what 

 for them is the main end — the furthering of various kinds of re- 

 search and the offering of all sorts of inducements in order to keep 

 and attract the interested attention of classical butterflies and sci- 

 entific worms. How well they succeed in this noble ambition is 

 known throughout the civilized world. 



Mr. G, H, Darwin, a son of Charles Darwin, has recently had 

 occasion to mention the enormous scientific output of Cambridge 

 University. After saying that the Koyal Society is the Academy 

 of Sciences in England, and that in its publications appear accounts 

 of all the most important scientific discoveries in England and most 

 of those in Scotland, Ireland, and other parts of Europe, he goes 

 on to state that he examined the Transactions of this society for 

 three years and discovered that out of the 5,480 pages published in 

 that time 2,418 were contributed by Cambridge men and 1,324 by 

 residents. 



In view of these facts, and despite the shortcomings of this uni- 

 versity as a teaching institution, it is to be hoped that private gen- 

 erosity will answer her appeal for financial assistance. Her labo- 

 ratories are a mine of research, and it is in them and in the men 

 who conduct them that Cambridge is perhaps most to be admired. 



The Cavendish Lal)oratory of Physics, where Clerk-Maxwell 

 and afterward Lord Ivayleigh taught, and which is at present in the 

 hand of their able successor, J. J. Thoms(»ii, is a building of con- 

 siderable size and admirably fitted out, but the rajiidly increasing 

 number of young physicists who are being allured by the working- 

 facilities of the place, and by the fame of Professor Thomson, is 



