550 



NATURE 



[April ^, 1889 



103 papers have been communicated to the Society this session. 

 Our library continues to increase, and every year becomes richer 

 in rare volumes and books of reference. The duplicate library 

 for lending is also becoming increasingly useful. The expendi- 

 ture under this head for the current year is ;i^3o8 5.?. 6d. 



I must now ask your attention to an event of which none of you 

 can be ignorant, which, though not exclusively relating to chemistry, 

 bears closely upon it and upon the future of British science. I 

 refer to the protest against the examination system in education 

 which appeared in November last. That protest had long been 

 in the air. For years past, men who take the trouble to observe 

 and to reflect have come to the conclusion that competitive ex- 

 amination is injurious to the individual, injurious to the race, and 

 that it starves original research at the root. They have convinced 

 themselves that if we flag in scientific investigation, that if a 

 lai^e and increasing proportion of professorships and of leading 

 positions in industrial establishments, both in the home kingdom 

 and in the colonies, are filled by aliens, the fault lies mainly with 

 our educational system. Men trained chiefly to pass examina- 

 tions either in theoretical or practical departments cannot equal 

 those who have been schooled in actual research, trained to 

 accurately observe and draw correct inferences from facts. All 

 the earlier protests were desultory, and calculated to produce no 

 lasting impression ; but the recent manifesto is the expression of 

 the collective opinion of many earnest representative men and 

 women. Hence it cannot be slighted as the mere outcry of a 

 faction, a sect, a school, or an interest. A most satisfactory 

 feature is the adhesion to the protest of men who formerly were 

 in favour of competitive examination as the test for entrance into 

 the civil or military service of the State. Prof. Max Miiller, of 

 Oxford, frankly admits he now considers competition to be a 

 mistake, and avers that the failure springs not only from the 

 manner in which the system has been worked, but is involved in 

 its very nature. But if this protest is to avail it must be ener- 

 getically followed up, for 1 must repeat what I have before 

 declared, that the position of science in Britain is far from 

 satisfactory. Though the nuober of articles devoted to research 

 in German Transactions and journals exceeds those in our own 

 publications, we must remember that the population of the Ger- 

 man Empire is greater than that of the United Kingdom by at 

 least one-fourth ; further, that the savants of Russia, of the 

 Austrian Empire, of Switzerland, of Holland, and Scandinavia, 

 largely select German journals as their medium of publication. 

 Not a few English and American scientific men follow the same 

 course. Hence, as regards quantity, our share in the world's 

 scientific work is more considerable than appears at the first 

 glance. Further, I think that if deficient in quantity English re- 

 search excels in quality. If we do less detail work we furnish a 

 larger proportion of generalizations and laws than most of our 

 rivals. As the discoverers of laws and generalizations, Black, 

 Boyle, Dalton, Faraday, Graham, Joule, Newton, Wollaston, and 

 Young are household words in the laboratory— yet none of these 

 men were the products of the examination system. There is 

 another evil against which I must strongly protest. I refer to 

 the system of "sealed papers." Everyone knows that on the 

 Continent, more especially in France, it is common for anyone 

 who has, as he thinks, approached the solution of some im- 

 portant question, to deposit a sealed sketch of his incomplete 

 results with the President or Secretary of some learned Society. 

 The sketch may lie perdu for years, until the author requests it 

 may be opened and read before the Society. The practice arose 

 from a desire that the author's priority should be guaranteed 

 against others who might lay claim to his ideas. But priority 

 can be quite as effectually secured by a brief preliminary notice 

 read before some Society or sent to some journal, the author 

 thus reserving to himself the further investigation of the subject. 

 Among men of honour such reservations are invariably respected. 

 But the "sealed paper" system lends itself to something which 

 borders unpleasantly upon fraud. Suppose an investigator takes 

 up some question, sees that it admits of two or more solutions, 

 or that various hypotheses present themselves to him as possible. 

 To work out the matter conclusively might require much time 

 and trouble. He therefore writes out each hypothesis, and in- 

 closes them separately in " sealed papers," duly numbered, care- 

 fully retaining copies. In process of time some other investigator, 

 ignorant of what the first author has done, takes up the subject, 

 and works out one of these hypotheses to demonstration. So 

 soon as his supplementary memoir is before the world the first 

 investigator requests) that the "sealed paper " No. 2 or No. 3 

 be opened and read. The nejK theory, labo.'iously considered 



and worked out, is found to have been anticipated, and the man 

 who has really done the work is robbed of much of his credit. 

 The seeming anticipator says nothing about the contents of other 

 "sealed papers," in which he has proposed totally different 

 hypotheses : these he now leaves to oblivion. I think the 

 Fellows of our Society will agree with me that a system which 

 thus enables a man to reap the fruit of another man's experi- 

 ments does not deserve to be naturalized in England. There is 

 a further abuse to which attention may usefully be drawn. It 

 sometimes happens a man of science will send an account of 

 researches he has completed to two journals simultaneously, 

 English or foreign, leaving each editor under the impression that 

 he is the sole recipient of the communication. Or, still worse, 

 a man reads a paper before our Society, and sends it to some 

 foreign journal, so that it may figure in print before it appears in 

 the Society's Transactions. To this subject I felt compelled to 

 refer when I had the honour of addressing you last year. And 

 you are now aware, your Council declines to publish any memoir 

 which has previously appeared in a foreign journal, unless 

 specially recommended by the Publication Committee and ap 

 proved by the Council. The reasons for this resolution are 

 not hard to seek. Not merely is the reputation of the 

 Society, as the original channel of the researches in question, 

 imperilled, or at least obscured, but a serious waste of time 

 and labour is inflicted upon anyone who needs to read up the 

 literature of the subject. We in England are by no means the 

 only sinners in this respect. It often happens that memoirs which 

 have been read before the Paris Academy of Sciences reappear 

 as " original matter" in certain French journals. I cannot pass 

 over a discovery made this season by Prof. Kriiss concerning nickel 

 and cobalt. As at first reported it seemed that these two metals 

 might be eliminated from our text-books, and that two or three 

 new substances would take their place. Had this been the case, 

 it would undoubtedly have been one of the greatest steps in pure 

 chemistry taken this century. It now appears that each of the 

 two metals contains a common impurity, which Prof. Kriiss has 

 been the first to detect and isolate. Nickel and cobalt thus puri- 

 fied will still retain their individuality, though their accepted 

 properties, physical and chemical, will need careful revision. In 

 any case the discovery is most instructive, warning us how careful 

 we should be to have firm ground under our feet. It is almost 

 humiliating that two metals which have been subjected to infinite 

 research and scrutiny should now be found to contain such a pro- 

 portion of unsuspected impurity. You are aware that at the 

 ballots for the election of Fellows half an hour or more of valu- 

 able time is spent in a manner which, to say the least, is not 

 very interesting. An attempt has been made to save time by 

 taking the ballot in the library, after the meeting, but so many 

 Fellows leave before the end of the meeting that the number 

 remaining has not been found sufficient to meet the requirement 

 of the by-laws. Your Council have from time to time had this 

 matter under discussion, and at their last meeting, on March 

 21, it was resolved " that in future the balloting for Fellows be 

 conducted by means of papers." The best manner of carrying 

 out this resolution will be a subject for future arrangement. A 

 posthumous memoir on the compressibility of hydrogen, by the 

 late Prof. Wroblewski, reminds us of the sad and untimely death 

 of this meritorious and distinguished worker in physical chemistry. 

 His death, as most of us doubtless are aware, was due to the 

 frightful burns which he received from the overturning orexjjlosion 

 of a paraffin lamp. In the memoir in question Prof. Wroblewski 

 treats of the compressibility of hydrogen at 99°, at 0°, at - I03°"5 

 (boiling-point of ethylene), and at - i82°*4 (boiling-point of oxy- 

 gen), for pressures ranging from i to 70 atmospheres. From the 

 results the following data were calculated : critical temperature 

 — 240°; critical pressure, 13*3 atmospheres; critical volume, 

 ©■00335. Hence it appears very doubtful whether M. Pictet or 

 M. Cailletet really succeeded in liquefying hydrogen. Last year 

 I had the pleasure to announce that one of our Fellows, Mr. 

 Nevvlands, had received the " Davy Medal" of the Royal Society 

 for his splendid discovery of the Periodic Law of the Chemical 

 Elements. I may also be allowed to state that to me, your 

 President, the Royal Society has likewise awarded the same dis- 

 tinction for my researches on the behaviour of substances under the- 

 influence Of the electric discharge in a high vacuum, with especial 

 reference to their spectroscopic reactions. Hence it has been sug- 

 gested that 1 might not unpiofitably claim your attention this even- 

 ing for a history of the so-called rare earths, as they have been 

 brought to light and discriminated by the aid of the s ectroscope. 

 [We print elsewhere Mr. Crookes's address on this subject.] 



