284 PERSONAL PREPARATION FOR RESEARCH. 



Much more remarkable than the deficiency of scientific 

 inquiry in women is the fact that the chief fountains of 

 new scientific knowledge have not been at our old univer- 

 sities. One would naturally suppose, and might reasonably 

 expect, that the great sources of such truth would be at 

 those places where abundance of funds are provided ' to 

 promote study,' and where there exists the quietude of 

 great educational institutions ; but such has not been the 

 case, the discovery of the truths of Grod in nature has not 

 been most encouraged there, and the great bulk of ori- 

 ginal investigation in physics and chemistry has not been 

 made at those places. I have been informed by a professor, 

 many years resident at Oxford, that an original scientific 

 investigator, unless he happened to be a man of high 

 social standing, would, on account of his occupation, be 

 simply ignored by the great bulk of his fellows there. 

 The statement, c We do not want original researchers,' 1 

 implicitly expresses a similar fact. 



Last, though not least, of the circumstances influen- 

 cing original research has been the formation of scientific 

 societies. Italy was the first to establish one (viz. the Acca- 

 demia del Cimento) in the times of Gralileo and Torricelli. 

 The English Eoyal Society was formed in the year 1645, 

 Germany in 1662 established its Imperial Academy, 

 and the Government of France in 1666 founded the 

 French Academy of Sciences in Paris. Dr. Wallis, one 

 of the earliest members of our Royal Society, has thus 

 described the character of its meeting : ' Our business was 

 (precluding matters of theology and State affairs) to dis- 

 course and consider of philosophical inquiries, and such as 

 related thereto : as physick, anatomy, geometry, astro- 



1 Essays on Endowment of Research, p. 159. 



