Sept. 27, 1883] 



NA TURE 



5i9 



and the botanical. In one of these universities of average size, 

 each of the institutes named consists of a spacious building 

 containing many rooms fi'ted as workshops, provided with 

 instruments, a museum, and, in the last instance, with an experi- 

 mental garden. All this is provided and maintained by the 

 State. At the head of each institute is the university professor 

 respectively of physiology, of zoology, of anatomy, of pathology, 

 or of botany. He is paid a stipend by the State, which in the 

 smallest university is a* low as 120/., but may be in others as 

 much as 700/., and averages say 400/. a year. Considering the 

 relative expenditure of the professional classes in the two 

 countries, this average may tie taken as equal to 800/. a year in 

 England. 1 Besides the professor, each institute has attached to 

 it, with salaries paid by the State, two qualified assistants, who 

 in course of time will succeed to independent positions. A 

 liberal allowance is also made to each institute by the State for 

 the purchase of instruments, material for study, and for the pay 

 of servants, so that the total expenditure on profe-sor, assistants, 

 laboratory service, and n aintenance, averages 800/. a year for 

 each institute — reaching a- much as 2000/. or 3000/. a year in 

 the larger universities. It is the business of the professor, in 

 conjunction with his assisla ts and the advanced students, who 

 are admitted to work in the laboratories free of charge, to carry 

 on investigations, to create new knowledge in the several domains 

 of physiology, zoology, amtomy, pathology, and botany. It is 

 for this that the professor receives his stipend, and it is on his 

 success in this field of labour that his promotion to a more 

 important or better paid post in another university depends. 

 In addition to and irrespectively of this part of his duties, each 

 professor is charged with the delivery of courses of lectures and 

 of elementary instruction to the general students of the university, 

 and for this he is allowed to charge a certain fee to each student, 

 which he receives himself , the total of such fees may, in the 

 case of a largely attended university and a popular subject, form 

 a very important addition to the professorial income; but it is 

 distinctly to be understood that such payment by fees is only an 

 addition to the professor's income, quite independent of his 

 stipend and of his regular occupation in the laboratory : it is 

 paid from a separate source and for a separate object. There 

 are thus in the German Empire more than 100 such institutes 

 devoted to the prosecution of biological discovery, carried on at 

 an annual cost to the State of about 80,000/., equal to about 

 160,000/. in England, providing po ts of graduated value for 

 300 investigators, some of small value, sufficient to carry the 

 young student through the earlier portion of his career, whilst 

 he is being trained and acting as the assistant of more experienced 

 men — others forming the sufficient but not too valuable prizes 

 which are the rewards of continuous and successful labour. 



In addition to these university institutes, there are in Germany 

 such special laboratories of research, with duly salaried staff of 

 investigators, as the Imperial Sanitary Institute of Berlin, and 

 the large museums of Berlin, Bremen, and other large towns, 

 corresponding to our own British Museum of Natural History. 



Moreover, we must be careful to note, in making any com- 

 parison with the arrangements existing in England, that there 

 are, in addition to the universities in Germany, a number of 

 other educational institutions, at least equal in number, which 

 are known as polytechnic -choils, technical colleges, and agri- 

 cultural colleges. These furnish posts of emolument to a limited 

 number of biological students, who give courses of instruction 

 to their pupils, but they have not the same arrangements for 

 research as the universities, and are closely similar to those 

 colleges which have been founded of late years in the provincial 

 towns of Engla<nd, 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 sufficient and adequate repre- 

 senta'ives of the German universities. As a matter of fact, the 

 excellent Engli-h colleges in que-tion do not present anything at 

 all comparable to the arrangements 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 the technical 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 



1 From the fact that the salaries of judges, civil servants, military and 

 naval officers, parsons and schoolmasters, as also the fees of physicians and 

 lawyers, are in Germany even less than half what is paid to their representa- 

 tives in England. I think that we are justified in making this estimate. 



Government, and which — quite irrespective of the French univer- 

 sity system, which is not on the whole superior to our own — con- 

 stitutes one of the most effective arrangements in any European 

 State for the production of new knowledge. The institution to 

 « hich I allude is the College de France in Paris — co-existing there 

 with the Sorbonne, the Ecole de Medecine, the Ecole Normale, 

 the Jardin des Plantes, and other State-supported institutions — 

 in which opportunity is provided for those Frenchmen who have 

 the requisite talent to pu^ue scientific discovery in the depart- 

 ment of biology, and in other branches of science. I particularly 

 mention the College de France, because it appears to me that the 

 foundation of such a college in London would be one of the 

 simplest and most direct steps that could he taken towards filling, 

 in some degree, the void from which English science suffers. 

 The College de France is divided into a literary and a scientific 

 faculty. Each faculty consists of some twenty professors. Each 

 professor in the scientific faculty is provided with a laboratory 

 and assistants (as many as four assistants in some cases), and 

 with a cDns'derable allowance for the expenses of the instruments 

 and materials required in research. The personal stipend of each 

 professor is ,£400, which has been increased by an additional 

 ;£ioo a year in some cases from the Government Department 

 charged with the promotion of higher studies. The professors in 

 this institution, as in the German univer.-ities, when a vacancy 

 occurs, have the right of nominating their future colleague, their 

 recommendation being accepted by the Government. The pro- 

 fessors are not expected to give any elementary instruction, but 

 are directed to carry on original investigations, in prosecuting 

 which they may as- ociate with themselves pupils who are sufficiently 

 advanced to join in such work ; and it is further the duty of each 

 professor to give a course of forty lectures in each year upon the 

 re.-ults of the researches in which he is engaged. There are at 

 present among the professors of the College de France four of 

 the most distinguished among contemporary students of biologi- 

 cal science : Professor Brown-Sequard, Professor Marey, Pro- 

 fessor Balbiani, and Professor Ranvier. Every one who is 

 acquainted with the progress of discovery in physiology, minute 

 anatomy, and embryology, will admit that the opportunities 

 afforded to these men have not been wasted ; they have, as the 

 result of the position in which they have been placed, produced 

 abundant and most valuable work, and have, in addition, trained 

 younger men to carry on the same line of activity. It was here, 

 too, in the College de France, that the great genius of Claude 

 Bernard found the necessary conditions for its development. 



Let us now see how many and what kind of institutions there 

 are in England devised so as to promote the making of new 

 knowledge in biological science. Most persons are apt to be 

 deceived in this matter by the fact that the terms "university," 

 " professorship, " and "college" are used very freely in England 

 in reference to institutions which have no pecuniary resources 

 whatever, and which, instead of corresponding to the German 

 arrangements which go by these names, are empty titles, neither 

 backed by adequate subsidy of the State nor by endowment from 

 private sources. 



In England, with its 25,000,000 inhabitants, there are only 

 four universities which possess endowments and professoriates — 

 viz., Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, and the Victoria {Owens 

 College). Besides these, which are variously and specially organ- 

 ised each in its own way, there are the London Colleges (Univer- 

 sity and King's), the Normal School of Science at South Ken- 

 sington, and various provincial colleges, which are to a small and 

 varying extent in possession of funds which could be or are used 

 to promote scientific research. Amongst all these variously 

 arranged in tttutions there is an extraordinarily small amount of 

 provision for biological research. In London there is one pro- 

 fessor>hip only, that at the Normal School of Science, which is 

 maintained by a stipend paid by the State, and has a laboratory 

 and salaried assistants, similarly maintained, in connection with 

 it. The only other posts in London which are provided with 

 stipends intended to ei able their holders to pursue researches in 

 the domain of biological science, are the two chairs of physiology 

 and of zoology at University College, which, through the muni- 

 ficence of a private individual (Mr. Jodrell), have been endowed 

 to 1 he extent of 300/. a year each. To these should be added, 

 in our calculation, certain posts in connection with the British 

 Museum of Natural History and the Koyal Gardens at Kew, 

 maintained by the State ; though it must be remembered that a 

 large part of the expenditure in those institutions is necessarily 

 tal-en up in the preservation of great national collections, and is 

 not applicable to the subvention of investigators. We may, 

 however, reckon about six posts, great and small, in the British 



