78 BIOLOGY AND THE STATE II 



whicli have been founded of late years in the pro- 

 vincial towns of England, such as Bristol, Nottingham, 

 and Leeds. The latter are sometimes quoted by 

 sanguine persons, who are satisfied with the neglected 

 condition of scientific training and research in this 

 country, as really sufiicient and adequate representa- 

 tives of the German universities. As a matter of 

 fact, the excellent English colleges in question do not 

 present anything at all comparable to the arrange- 

 ments of a German university, and are, in respect of 

 the amount of money which is expended upon them, 

 the number of their teaching staff, and the efficiency 

 of their laboratories, inferior not merely to the smallest 

 German university, but inferior to many of tlie techni- 

 cal schools of that country. 



Passing from Germany, I would now ask your 

 attention for a moment to an institution which is 

 supported by the French Government, and which — 

 quite irrespective of the French university system, 

 which is not on the whole superior to our own — 

 constitutes one of the most effective arrangements in 

 any European State for the production of new know- 

 ledgfe. The institution to which I allude is the CoUeo^e 

 de France in Paris — coexisting there with the Sor- 

 bonne, the Ecole de Medecine, the Ecole Normale, the 

 Jardin des Plantes, and other State-supported institu- 

 tions — in which opportunity is provided for those 

 Frenchmen who have the requisite talent to pursue 

 scientific discovery in the department of biology, 

 and in other branches of science. I particularly men- 

 tion the College de France, because it appears to me 



