102 LIGHT SCIENCE FOR LEISURE HOURS. 



ment of national institutions expresslyfor the practical 

 advancement of scientific research. He remarks that 

 ",mert engaged; in ^denee. need hardly be told that 

 when they discover a new substance, the determination 

 of the physical properties of which is attended with 

 cost and labor, they experience a great perhaps 

 insuperable difficulty in obtaining its examination. 

 A new theory, or the confutation or continuation of an 

 old one, if dependent on any considerable accumulation 

 of facts, shares even a worse fate." Important benefits 

 could not fail to result if difficulties such as these 

 were removed from the paths of physical research, by 

 the institution of bodies whose duty it would be to 

 undertake, and complete in an accurate and systematic 

 manner, costly and tedious investigations on which 

 vast interests may be dependent. 



(From the Daily News for December 9, 1869.) 



AMERICAN ALMS FOR BRITISH SCIENCE* 



OUR astronomers have received an invitation which 

 is as pleasing to them as men of science as it is painful 



* This was one of a series of articles which appeared in the Daily 

 News during the months which followed the announcement that the 

 British Government would give no aid to the eclipse expedition. To the 

 liberality with which the Daily News gave space for these appeals may 

 fairly be ascribed the fact that eventually the eclipse committee was 

 aroused to something like energetic action. When the real state of the 

 case became known to Government, ample assistance was rendered. The 



