Advantages of the system of Government Grants. 209 



amount of time it occupies. Many necessary pre- 

 liminary experiments have to be made, which yield 

 either negative, unsuccessful, or incomplete results, 

 and make the undertaking expensive. A good in- 

 vestigation in chemistry also not unfrequently costs 

 the investigator a sovereign a day if he is wholly em- 

 ployed upon it. In some cases, for each ;ioo received 

 as a grant, at least a 1,000, was directly and in- 

 directly expended. Any person therefore who under- 

 took a research became a loser, and aid from the 

 Government Grant fund did not entirely cover his 

 loss. Only scientific men who had other sources of 

 income were able to avail themselves of the grants. 

 The existence of the grants also was not widely 

 known. The advantages of the plan were, it dimin- 

 ished the loss to the investigator, and the fact 

 of being allotted a sum from the fund was considered 

 highly creditable to the recipient. 



In consequence largely of the evidence collected 

 from eminent men of science from all parts of Great 

 Britain, and the recommendations based upon it, by 

 the Royal Commission for the Advancement of 

 Science, the Grant system has been extended ; our 

 Government recently placed an additional amount 

 of 4,000 a year, for five years, to be distributed 

 in sums at the recommendation of the Royal 

 Society to suitable applicants, and the five years 

 have now elapsed. 



This extension of the Grant system has been an 



