362 STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 
then, can find no asylum in our universities, and are 
utterly abandoned by our government, it may well 
be asked, What are their occupations? and how are 
they saved from that poverty and wretchedness 
which have so often embittered the peace, and broken 
the spirit, of neglected genius? Some of them 
squeeze out a miserable sustenance as teachers of 
elementary mathematics in our military academies, 
where they submit to mortifications not easily borne 
by an enlightened mind; more waste their hours 
in the drudgery of private lecturing; while not a 
few are torn from the fascination of original research, 
and compelled to. waste their strength in the com- 
position of treatises for periodical works and popular 
compilations. Nay, so thoroughly is the spirit of 
science subdued, and so paltry are the honours of 
successful enquiry, that even well remunerated pro- 
fessors, and others who enjoy a competent indepen- 
dence and sufficient leisure, and are highly fitted by 
their talents to advance the interests of science, are 
found devoting themselves to professional author- 
ship, and thus robbing their country of those services 
of which it stands so much in need.” Every one, 
at all acquainted with the actual state of the phy- 
sical sciences in Britain, must be well aware that 
this picture, however humiliating, is not at all ex- 
aggerated. 
(250.) If we look more especially to zoology, the 
effect of these discouragements are peculiarly de- 
plorable. So completely have all those higher objects, 
which entitle the study of nature to the name, and 
confer on it the dignity, of a science, been lost sight 
of, that there is not one man either in or out of the 
