IMPORTANCE OF RESEARCH 179 



owing to the war, would have maintained several 

 first-class Research Professorships since the Trust 

 was founded. I may seem to exaggerate the import- 

 ance of research in the scientific departments of the 

 Scottish Universities, but the science students can 

 be assured of this, that unless active and famous 

 centres of original investigation spring up in Scotland, 

 and make themselves known all over the scientific 

 world, the whole body of students turned out will 

 suffer grievously in competition with those trained 

 from institutions where such centres exist. 



There has lately been much valuable discussion 

 in the Scientific Society and elsewhere of the needs 

 of science students and their perplexities, animated 

 by the commendable desire that the University 

 should afford a serious life-training rather than a 

 collection of academic distinctions and degrees. The 

 state of war has hitherto prevented anything being 

 actually accomplished in the way of bringing the 

 training afforded in science into line with modern 

 requirements, but now that the war is over these 

 matters have a paramount claim for settlement, and 

 it is to be hoped that the new magazine will serve as 

 the focus through which the wants and difficulties of 

 the science students may be brought into general 

 notice and prominence. 



As regards the grave and pressing question of the 

 reform of the Science curriculum, I have heard but 

 two kinds of objections. There is first the objection 

 of vested interests, which I will not deal with here 

 because I want to make myself as pleasant as I can, 

 and no discussions are so unpleasant as those which 

 turn on such points. And there is, secondly, the 

 much more respectable objection, which takes the 

 general form of the reproach that, in thus limiting 

 the curriculum, we are seeking to narrow it. We are 

 told that the scientific man ought to be a person of 



