90 



NA TURE 



[November 24, 1904 



SCIENCE AND THE STATE} 

 T HAVE long held that there is a certain class of work 

 performed by institutions which should undoubtedly be 

 carried on by some department of the State, specially de- 

 voted to such work. 



The work to which I refer is such as is not suitable, or 

 to be expected from societies or individuals. It is work 

 which is continuous and must expand in the flux of time, 

 which is recognised by the public as useful, which is not 

 and cannot be remunerative, which requires a staff larger 

 than is required by the ordinary demands of a society, and 

 cannot be dropped without serious detriment to the 

 public. 



When there is some pressing need Government does 

 administer branches of a department which has to carry 

 out scientific investigation. Thus the medical branch of 

 the Local Government Board has been laboriously and 

 gradually built up. It is far otherwise, however, with that 

 scientific work which has no department specially interested 

 in or needing it, though it is for the public weal ; as the 

 State departments only exist for ministering to that weal, 

 it appears that some department should be created or en- 

 larged to take charge of such work. This view, which I have 

 long held, has been more than confirmed by the evidence 

 given before a recent committee, which the Treasury 

 practically appointed, to consider the present position of the 

 Meteorological Office, but limiting the recommendation to 

 be made so far as the grant made to it is concerned. 



Meteorological science has been greatly retarded in Great 

 Britain by want of funds. Perhaps the latest example 

 occurred in iqo2, when there was a proposal to obtain further 

 information about atmospheric currents and conditions by 

 the use of balloon and kite observations, an international 

 scheme of work being contemplated. The small sum of 

 Sooi. a year would have been necessary to carry out this 

 research, but the Royal Society was obliged, on behalf of 

 the Meteorological Office, to reply that they had no funds, 

 a reply which it would have been difficult to make had the 

 Meteorological Office been part of a Government depart- 

 ment. Let us, look across the water at our American cousins 

 and see how they regard the science of meteorology, and 

 whether or not it is important enough to attach it to the 

 State. According to evidence given to the committee, the 

 Weather Bureau in America, corresponding to our Meteor- 

 ological Office and forming part of the Department of Agri- 

 culture, was spending 230,000!. a year on the same work as 

 that of the Meteorological Committee, whose funds at the 

 maximum were confined to 15,300!. In Germany, where 

 very large sums are spent on the oceanic part of meteor- 

 ology, it is a part of the Navy Department. We, with our 

 splendid navy and mercantile marine, surely ought to see 

 that this part of meteorology is as well cared for as it is 

 in Germany, and that there is no lack of funds. The 

 evidence given before the committee showed that without 

 the help of the. hydrographic branch of the Navy the work 

 could not have been carried on with anything like success. 

 I am not intending to enter into a discussion of meteor- 

 ological science, but it has been pointed out that if fore- 

 casts are any good (and we have it on record that from 

 68 per cent, to 75 per cent, of them are successful) they 

 ought to be made as good as possible. There is no doubt 

 that kite and balloon observations, and the use of wireless 

 telegraphy ■ in mid-ocean, would give a still higher per- 

 centage of successful forecasts. But the additions must 

 remain in abeyance owing to the money limit which has 

 been fixed at the same standard for so many years. 



Again, we find that a very large item of expenditure by 

 the Meteorological Office is the cost of telegrams. It has 

 to pay the same price for the use of the Post Office tele- 

 graphs as any private individual, whereas every Govern- 

 ment office has the free use of the wires, and has not to 

 consider whether a telegram runs to 12 or 120 words, or 

 whether it sends i or 100. The main object of the Meteor- 

 ological Office is to assist the public, and this is the same 

 as that of Government departments, yet the one is hampered 

 by the cost of publishing information (which to be of the 



1 Abridged from the inaugural address delivered at the Society of Arts 

 on November 16 by Sir William Abney, K.C.B., F.R.S., vice-president 

 and chairman of the council of the Society. 



NO. 1830, VOL. 71] 



greatest use must be transmitted at once), whilst the other ' 

 is not. The view of the committee which sat was strongly 

 that this disability ought to be removed, so that wide pub- 

 licity to weather reports, especially in harvest time, should 

 be given. Finally, the committee almost unanimously re- 

 ported in favour of the office being attached to some Govern- 

 ment department, and proposed that this should be the Board 

 of .Agriculture, a department which at present is not over- 

 weighted. 



I must remind you that our great Indian dependency 

 has been more alive to the question of meteorology than we 

 have at home ; but I trust that, backward as we are, we 

 mav, before long, attain that e.xcellence of administration 

 which the Indian Meteorological Department has exhibited 

 under its present and past able administrators. 



What the Government intends to do with the committee's 

 report I do not know. Judging from previous history, there 

 seems to be a dread at the Treasury of any of the present 

 departments having more to do with science than is abso- 

 lutely forced upon them. Perhaps this is natural. The 

 lay official mind has, with some few exceptions, never fully 

 grasped the importance of orderly and continued scientific 

 investigation in order to increase national prosperity. It 

 recognises this in a way, for the need is continually brought 

 into prominence by the Press, but to it the easiest plan is to 

 leave all such investigation to societies. In Great Britain 

 it has never been realised that to foster such work is a 

 duty of the nation. We have ignored the very patent fact 

 that in free .America and in other countries the necessity of 

 annexing to the State all utilitarian research (when such 

 research is carried out with the definite object of public 

 usefulness) is fully recognised. I am not proposing for an 

 instant that the work which is carried out by individuals 

 or societies should be curtailed, but there are questions which 

 are too large, too expansive, and bearing too much on the 

 public weal which should be dealt with in Great Britain as 

 they are in (say) America. 



I have only so far referred to the Meteorological Com- 

 mittee, but, at all events, there is another institution, the 

 National Physical Laboratory, which should come into the 

 same category of quasi-public departments. 



The Government has given the National Physical Labor- 

 atory buildings, and a sum of 19,000!. to make the additions 

 to them, which were absolutely necessary to commence with. 

 It granted 4000!. a year for four years, and afforded assist- 

 ance to it through the Office of Works. The term of years 

 for which the grant was made runs out in March next, and 

 its financial position has to be reviewed bv the State through 

 the Treasury. Its existence and development has become 

 a necessity through the excellent work that it has already 

 done. But there is work of first-class importance to the 

 public which the laboratory has been forced to refuse owing 

 to lack of funds. Standardising is not a luxury in the pre- 

 sent day, and England has suffered much in its trade owing 

 to the want of it. 



The table on p. 91 will show the amounts granted by the 

 different States in regard to these laboratories. 



Here we have a direct comparison of grants and turn-out 

 of work. Great Britain, I think I may say, has no reason 

 to be ashamed of the work, though it has of the grants. 

 In connection with the results given in the table, I mav 

 point out that France and the United States started their 

 institutions after the inauguration of. our own laboratory. 



The idea of making any such institution a State institu- 

 tion, it may be supposed, was never entertained by the 

 Government, such a notion being foreign to existing pre- 

 cedent. The precedent — bad precedent too — had to govern 

 the situation. We have only to look across the Atlantic 

 to see how our Anglo-Saxon cousins treat such matters. 

 There, institutions such as I have here described are part 

 and parcel of a State department, and have a handsome 

 annual grant allotted to them. The Government of the 

 United States recognised the public need, and so did 

 Congress, with the result that the public need is catered 

 for by a public department, as it should be. 



In regard to the National Physical Laboratory, it is no 

 secret that at the present moment it is hampered by want 

 of funds for equipment and staff. Its refusal of work has 

 only proceeded from this cause. The report which it issued 

 showed that its expenditure had been larger than its income 



