ADDRESS. 



lxvii 



be expedient. I only wish that persons who entertain such views, would pay 

 some attention to the working of the Government Grant Committee of the 

 Royal Society, a body composed of forty-two persons selected from among 

 the most eminent cultivators of science, and which is entrusted with the 

 distribution of an annual sum of £1000, placed by Parliament at the disposal 

 of the Royal Society at the suggestion of Lord John Russell, in aid of 

 scientific inquiries. One of the rules of that Committee is, that no sum 

 whatever shall be given to defray the merely personal expenses of the 

 experimenters ; all is spent on materials and the construction or purchase of 

 instruments, except in a very few and rare instances in which travelling ex- 

 penses form the essential feature of the outlay. A list of the objects to which 

 the grants are devoted has been published by Parliament; among them are 

 interesting investigations into the laws of heat, the strength of materials used 

 in building, the best form of boilers, from the bursting of which so many 

 fatal accidents are continually occurring, the electric conductivity of metals, 

 so important for telegraphic communication, and into many other questions, 

 in the solution of which the public generally have the deepest interest. The 

 cost of these researches has been defrayed by these valuable grants. They 

 have provided also for the construction of better and standard meteorological 

 and rnagnetical instruments, for the execution of valuable drawings of scarce 

 fossils and zoological specimens collected with great labour by distinguished 

 naturalists, for the reduction and publication of astronomical observations by 

 some of our most highly esteemed Astronomers, and for physiological re- 

 searches which have an important bearing on our knowledge of the human 

 frame. Time indeed would fail me were I to attempt to describe all the good 

 done and perhaps evil prevented by the distribution of these grants; and 

 yet no portion of the money can be said to be really received by those to 

 whom it is appropriated, inasmuch as it is all spent in the various means and 

 appliances of research ; in short, to quote from a letter addressed to the 

 Secretary of the Treasury, at a time when the grant was temporarily withheld, 

 " by the aid of this contribution, the Government has, in fact, obtained for 

 the advancement of science and the national character, tlie personal and 

 gratuitous services of men of first-rate eminence, which, without this 

 comparatively small assistance, would not have been so applied." I think 

 that we were justified in terming this assistance small; for it is really so 

 in comparison with the amount of other sums which are applied to analogous 

 objects, but without that wholesome control of intelligent distributors, 

 thoroughly and intimately conversant with the characters and competency of 

 those who apply for the grants. The recognition of such a Board as has 

 been sketched out by the Council of the Royal Society, may not lead to 

 a greater expenditure of public money, indeed it is much more likely to 

 curtail it ; as some who now apply for aid through the interest of persons 

 having influence with those in authority, who are generally but ill-informed 

 on the subject-matter of the application, would hesitate long before they 



e2 



