198 Valuation of Scientific Discoveries. 



amongst the public in general, and begin to produce 

 beneficial- effects. Inventors, manufacturers, medical 

 men, and others, also begin to apply them to their re- 

 spective purposes. In some cases striking applications 

 are immediately made of them, and public attention 

 is thus directed to the useful result ; but in many 

 cases the beneficial effects are small, numerous, and 

 indirect, and it is difficult to trace and describe them. 

 The objection also is deficient in force, because expen- 

 diture in any other occupation, and receipt of the 

 profit upon it, are rarely simultaneous. Many of the 

 wisest reforms in this country have been a long time 

 in producing their results. We must therefore be con- 

 tent, as in all ordinary cases of investment, with the 

 conviction that the expenditure will be profitable, and 

 we must wait patiently for the certain harvest. In 

 research, as in many other human enterprises, a man 

 who will not move until he is absolutely certain that 

 what he intends to do will at at once succeed, must 

 sit still and perish. 



Suggestions have also been made to appoint a 

 Government Committee, or Council, whose function 

 should be to value scientific discoveries, and make 

 corresponding amounts of reward to the discoverers. 

 But this appears to be a less feasible plan, because 

 no man can, at the period of discovery, determine 

 what amount of practical result a discovery will 

 ultimately produce. Who could have foretold 

 with certainty at the date of Oersted's discovery of 

 electro-magnetism, that this discovery would result in 



