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NATURE 



\Aug. 19, 1S75 



send out for gratuitous information. We do sometimes, 

 it is true, apply to individuals and sometimes to societies, 

 but in very many cases, I am afraid, the questions are 

 shelved, because there is no competent and authoritative 

 body to refer to." 



Capt. Douglas Galton, of the Office of Works and 

 Public Buildings, thinks that, as a rule — 



"... Our statesmen do not appreciate properly the 

 value of scientific advice or scientific inquiry, and that 

 they are very much fonder of experiments made upon a 

 large scale with no defined system, than they are of expe- 

 riments which have been brought out as the result of a 

 carefully studied previous inquiiy. I think that an enor- 

 mous amount of money was wasted in the case of the 

 inquiry into armour plates, both for ships and forts. In 

 that case the Government appointed a partly scientific 

 committee, but it was mixed up with other persons who 

 were not scientific ; and instead of commencing a series 

 of experiments upon a small and clearly defined scale, 

 from which they could have drawn conclusions for making 

 their larger experiments, they began by firing at any 

 plates that were offered to them which had no relation 

 one to another, either in their relations to the guns or to 

 the form of backing, or in any other way, and conse- 

 quently it was difficult to draw useful calculations from 

 them." 



Mr. Froude, who was a prominent member of the late 

 Committee on Naval Designs, and who is now devoting 

 his whole time without remuneration to the investigation 

 of the proper forms of ships of war, states that if, at an 

 earlier time, a laboratory had existed, and proper experi- 

 ments had been made, enormous sums would have been 

 saved which have been expended in the actual construc- 

 tion of ships, or, as he terms it, in " experiments on the 

 scale of twelve inches to a foot ;" and that definite results 

 would have been arrived at with less loss of time. 



It will be seen from the evidence of General Strachey 

 that he also disapproves of the mode in which Government 

 is at present advised on questions of science, especially 

 on the ground of the absence of scientific training in the 

 political and official classes of this country. 



Sir Wm. Thomson has given the following evidence : — 



"... With a vast amount of mechanical work which 

 is necessarily undertaken by the Government, and which 

 is continually in hand, questions involving scientific diffi- 

 culties of a novel character frequently occur ; questions 

 requiring accurate knowledge of scientific truth hitherto 

 undeveloped are occurring every day. In both respects 

 the Government is at present insufficiently advised, and 

 the result is undoubtedly that mechanical works are some- 

 times not done as well as they might be done, that great 

 mistakes are sometimes made ; and again, a very serious 

 and perhaps even a more serious evil of the present sys- 

 tem, in which there is not sufficient scientific advice for 

 the Government, is the undertaking of works which 

 ought never to be undertaken." 



" Are you able to point out any instances which you 

 have in your mind of mistakes which you think have 

 occurred from the want of good advice on the part of the 

 Government? — One great mistake undoubtedly was the 

 construction of the Captain, and I believe that a perma- 

 nent scientific council advising the Government would 

 have made it impossible to commit such a mistake. They 

 would, in the very beginning, have relieved the Govern- 

 ment from all that pressure of ignorant public opinion 

 which the Government could not possibly, in the present 

 state of things, withstand." 



The present system of Special Committees is objected 

 to by Sir William Thomson, and by other competent 

 witnesses. 



Sir William Thomson thinks " that a single body would 

 be better than a number of small committees for advising 

 the Government on the great variety of questions which 

 from time to time would be likely to arise." 



Admiral Richards, late hydrographer of the Admi- 

 ralty, is of opinion that — 



" The members of such committees must be selected 

 more or less to fulfil certain political conditions, and that, 

 as a rule, they would come new to the subject that they 

 were going to consider, and I do not believe that the 

 Commission which sat on the Naval Designs the other 

 day was a very successful one. I do not know that any 

 great advantages have arisen or are likely to arise 

 from it." 



Mr, Froude, in reply to the remark, "You do not 

 consider committees of that kind to be a very satisfactory 

 way of proceeding?" thus states his objection to the pre- 

 sent system : — 



" I do not think so, because they have to find out the 

 dream and the interpretation both, which is always a 

 difficulty. They have to feel their way to a lociis standi, 

 which would already be possessed by a Council habitu- 

 ally operating with reference to the subject." 



Additional examples of these defects are given, not 

 only by these witnesses, but also by othei's, whom we 

 shall quote when dealing with the proposed remedies. 



Evidence was taken by the Commission as to the 

 insufficiency of the present appliances for investigation. 



The attention of the Commission was especially directed 

 to the want of laboratories for the use of the officials 

 charged with scientific investigations urgently required for 

 the economical management of the public departments. 



Mr. Anderson, the superintendent of machinery at Wool- 

 wich, who has been responsible for the expenditure of 

 "very nearly 3,000,000/. of public money," points out that 

 there are no means at the disposal of State servants to 

 enable them to investigate questions on which large ex- 

 penditure depends. With special regard to his own 

 department he states : — 



" There is a very great deal which I should like to see 



taken in hand systematically There is much that 



we are in the dark about ; we are groping in the dark in 

 almost everything at present." 



" . . . . Although we know a very great deal with 

 regard to iron, cast, wrought, and in the condition of steel, 

 there is yet very much which we do not know, and I am 

 persuaded that if we could with certainty treat ordinary 

 cast iron in the way that we sometimes do, nearly by 

 chance, we would do away with three-fourths, or a very 

 large proportion of the wrought iron which is now used in 

 this country, and we should use cast iron." 



He next refers to another question of great importance 

 to almost all the public departments : — 



"... There is another very important subject 

 which I might mention to the Commission. Some twenty 

 years ago we were using ten or twelve pounds of coal per 

 horse-power per hour, and the majority of engines still 

 require six pounds, but by the improvements that have 

 taken place we are now down to two pounds. There is 

 a little engine at work now in the London district which 

 is working at i| pounds. There is a great gulf yet 

 between getting steam-engines that will work at i| pounds 

 per horse-power per hour, and the point where we are 

 now ; I mean getting that done practically : but I believe 

 that if the right man, or two men, were told off to 

 thoroughly investigate this subject, and not to stop work- 

 ing until they had brought it to a practical shape, we 

 could in ten years from this time get down to one pound 



