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 

 o?, that there is not one man either in or out ot the 



