258 
_" 
NATURE 
[Fuly 31, 1873 
shall get from our endowments anything more than first- 
rate teaching, and on the other hand we have a large 
proportion of the University revenues yet to dispose of. 
It would, of course, be a possible alternative to endow so 
large a number of professors as to reduce their teaching 
duties to a vanishing point, and thus avoid the appear- 
ance of a radical change and escape the reproach which 
apparently attaches to the direct endowment of Research. 
It is not to be supposed that the advocates of indirect 
endowment intend deliberately to take up with such a 
subterfuge, yet on any other hypothesis it is as certain as 
anything can well be, that the original investigation which 
they put in the second place will come off second best. 
It were invidious to allude to particular instances, but it 
- is past denial that the original discoveries in Science which 
once made England famous, and now more or less maintain 
that fame, neither were nor are achieved by the holders of 
teaching posts, and it is equally clear that many of the forms 
into which modern Science is developing are not of such 
a character as to be capable of being transmitted by oral 
instruction. The truth seems to be that the intimate 
connection sought to be established between original in- 
vestigation and professorial teaching is borrowed from 
the artificial institutions of another country. It is the chief 
characteristic of a German University that the full pro- 
fessor, the extraordinary professor, and the Zrivat docent 
make up the class which is there engaged in scientific 
study not less than in academical teaching, a peculiarity 
which may be partly attributed to the laborious character 
of the people, but yet more to the pecuniary poverty of 
the Institutions. It is in fact from the want of endow- 
ments that the emulous spirit of German patriotism has 
been compelled to exact double work from a single in- 
strumentality. The renowned University of Berlin is 
indebted for the whole of its resources to the state, and 
that, a state which is the most frugally administered of 
any in Europe: and from this cause it has learnt to 
elaborate an organised system of student teachers and 
inchoate professors, from whom research is expected as 
a duty co-ordinate with instruction, while the natural 
docility and perseverance of the German character have 
caused these expectations to be abundantly realised. Yet 
one of the most celebrated of modern German pro- 
fessors is reported to have said, that “the life of a 
professor would be a very pleasant one, if it were not for 
the lecturing.” No doubt there are many English pro- 
fessors who secretly to themselves would re-echo the 
sentiment ; yet what could sound more absurd if regarded 
from the ordinary point of view which is popular in this 
country? Germany indeed has set an example of the 
novel forms of scientific industry which should flourish at 
a living University, but the attempt to transfer to Oxford 
and Cambridge the German system in its integrity would 
in some respects be a backward step, and would probably 
prove a failure. The history of our Universities is 
against it, and their wealth alone serves to vitiate any 
analogy borrowed from the parsimonious Teuton. They 
possess, however, a large number of appointments, uncon- 
nected for the most part with teaching duties, and origin- 
ally destined to be held on the condition of study. It 
would be easy by means of amalgamation and modifica- 
tion of tenure to make these appointments worthy of the 
acceptance of those who devote their livés to Scientific 
research ; nor ought it to be styled “a visionary ideal,” 
to recognise that natural division of labour, which is per- 
mitted to us by the magnificent wealth at our disposal, 
agreeable to English precedent, and in close accordance 
with the intentions of the founders of Colleges. 
c 
2 
CARNE’S “ TRAVELS IN INDO-CHINA” 
Travels in Indo-China and the Chinese Empire. By 
Louis de Carné, Member of the Commission of Explo- 
ration of Mekong. With a Notice of the Author by 
the Count de Carné. Translated from the French. 
(London : Chapman and Hall, 1872.) 
HE work, a translation of which is before us, is a 
history of the expedition despatched in 1865, under 
the auspices of the French Government, for the purpose 
of exploring the river Mekong, of which expedition Mons. 
Louis de Carné was a member. In consequence of his 
death the work has been carried through the press by 
his father, the Count de Carné. Mons. Louis de Carné, 
with every allowance being made for a father’s very natu- 
ral expressions of eulogy and admiration, seems to have 
been a young man of rare ability and promise, and his 
untimely death at the early age of twenty-seven, the re- 
sult of the hardships he had to encounter during the 
expedition, marks a devotion to the cause of Science 
worthy of the emulation of all those who are desirous of 
helping forward scientific inquiry and research, The 
expedition, the history of which is here detailed, origi- 
nated in a suggestion by the Governor of the French 
colony of Cochin-China to his Government, that the 
river Mekong, at the mouth of which Saigon, the capital 
of the colony, is situate, might be made the principal route 
for the commerce passing between Europe and China. 
There can be no doubt that, could this route be satisfac- 
torily established, the advantage to Europe would be 
immense, for in addition to a saving of about 1,200 miles 
in point of distance, the perilous navigation of the China 
seas, so much dreaded on account of the terrible mon- 
soons by which they are periodically ravaged, might be 
entirely avoided. Accordingly, in the year 1865 the 
Marquis de Chasseloup, the French Colonial Minis- 
ter, sanctioned the scheme of an expedition which should 
serve the interests of Science, as well as those of the 
colony, and which, ascending the Mekong from its mouth, 
where it empties itself into the Indian Ocean, to its sources 
amid the mountains of Thibet, should report fully on the 
navigability of that great river, which was then almost 
unknown beyond the Lake of Augeor, through which the 
boundary line between the kingdoms of Siam and Cam- 
bodgia passes. M. de Carné thus sums up the objects 
of the expedition :—“ It was desired, first, that the old 
maps should be rectified, and the navigability of the - 
river tried, it being our hope that we might bind together 
French Cochin-China and the western provinces of China 
by means of it. Were the rapids, of whose existence we 
knew, an absolute barrier? Were the islands of Khon 
an impassable difficulty? Was there any truth in 
the opinion of geographers who, with Dumoulin, be- 
lieved that there was a communication between the 
Meinam and the Mekong? To gather information re- 
specting the sources of the latter, if it proved impossible 
