PROPOSED APPLICATIONS OF SMITHSON'S BEQUEST. 935 



A liberal price might also be paid for other papers that 

 may be considered worthy of a place in the Transactions. 



Again, as an additional means of promoting increase of 

 knowledge, special appropriations may occasionally be made 

 to institute definite lines of research under the direction of 

 competent persons; after the manner, perhaps, of the 

 British Association. Such appropriations, however, your 

 committee think, should be made with great care ; for im- 

 portant objects only, and where there is fair promise of 

 speedy result ; and it might be advisable, as an additional 

 guarantee, that in deciding the kind of research and the 

 amount of money to be appropriated, the board avail 

 itself of the suggestions of a council of scientific men. 



In the prosecution of researches undertaken at the in- 

 stance of the Institution, and requiring the aid of valuable 

 apparatus, the use of that belonging to the institution, 

 might under proper regulations, be granted. 



This stimulating and cherishing of research in unexplored 

 fields seems to your committee the more necessary and 

 proper in a country like ours, where but few have at com- 

 mand that easy leisure, common in older countries, and 

 there permitting the prosecution of researches through years, 

 or a lifetime, without expectation or necessity of pecuniary 

 return. 



Your committee are aware that the researches here recom- 

 mended, no matter how intrinsically important, demanded 

 as they are, too, by the wording of the bequest which en- ■ 

 dowed our institution, will be likely, in their inception and 

 first publication, to interest a comparatively small circle 

 only. The Transactions of the Institution can be expected 

 to obtain but a limited circulation. Not that the discoveries 

 there to be presented are of little intrinsic importance, and 

 bear no practical fruit; the reverse is true. Some may be 

 immediately productive; others will include investigations, 

 unproductive in themselves for the time, yet the necessary 

 preliminaries to the actual discovery of modes and forma 

 that become in every day life, productive and profitable; 

 for invention is but the practical application of scientific 

 results. But the severe investigations in physics which ulti- 

 mately resulted in the steam engine and the magnetic tele- 

 graph, inventions that are now revolutionizing the world, 

 attracted in their original form the attention only of the 

 strictly scientific. To reach the people generally, other and 

 further means must be employed. And this brings your 

 committee to speak of the testator's second object — 



The diffusion of knowledge among men. 



