INSTANCES OF COST OF EESEAECHES. 221 



of Scientific Papers,' have cost our Government and the 

 Royal Society nearly 10,000/. The number of researches 

 is more than 100,000, and their titles alone occupy eight 

 large folio volumes of 1,000 pages each ; and all these 

 researches, the mere pecuniary cost of which would amount 

 to many millions of pounds, were made entirely at the 

 expense of the investigators themselves, nearly all of whom 

 were men of limited pecuniary means. 



Frequently only a small portion of the total expense of 

 a research can be judged of by the published account of 

 the investigation, because a very large number of experi- 

 ments made in the endeavour to select a good subject of 

 investigation lead only to negative results ; and many of 

 those made in the earlier stages of a research are imperfect 

 and unfit for publication, and some, made in attempts to 

 extend the research in various directions, lead to no positive 

 knowledge, and the whole of these have to be discarded 

 and consigned to oblivion. Often several months of 

 labour are expended in finding that a supposed new fact 

 was not new, or that the circumstance intended to be 

 investigated was not worthy of an investigation. Faraday 

 has remarked : ' The world little knows how many of the 

 thoughts and theories that have passed through the mind 

 of a scientific investigator have been crushed in silence 

 and secrecy by his own severe criticism and adverse 

 examination ; that in the most successful instances not a 

 tenth of the suggestions, the hopes, the wishes, the pre- 

 liminary conclusions have been realised.' 



Manufacturers occasionally require an original research 

 to be made in connection with their processes, and some- 

 times object to the expense because the results are so 

 small in amount, as if they expected such kind of work to 

 yield the same quantity of effect as ordinary routine pro- 

 fessional labour, and forgetting that by the exercise of 



