344 Notes and Comments, 
human interest. Scientific and humanistic studies are, indeed, 
supposed to be anti-pathetic, and to represent opposing 
qualities ; so that it has become common to associate science 
with all that is cold and mechanistic in our being, and to believe 
that the development of the more spiritual parts of man’s 
nature belong essentially to other departments of intellectual 
activity.’ 
A NEGLECTED STUDY. 
‘The Study of Nature is elevating, and its material value 
is of the highest ; yet it is deplorably neglected, with the result 
that only very rarely is the simplest scientific subject referred 
to accurately in the works of literary men. Our guides and 
councillors, not only in the periodical press, but also in less 
ephemeral publications, are, in the great majority of cases, 
unaware of the most obvious facts and phenomena of Nature, 
and have no acquaintance with the most elementary vocabulary 
of science.* In everything that relates to the natural universe 
around them they are blind leaders of the blind ; and they 
call their darkness light. They are indifferent to the wonderful 
growth and extent of scientific knowledge, and live in a paradise 
in which rounded phrases and curious fancies are of more 
importance than actual facts. In such a world a one-eyed man 
can be king. A more enlightened man will only be obtained 
when it is realised that an educated man must know something 
of science as well as of literature.’ 
SCIENCE AND THE STATE. 
Professor Gregory is inclined at times to be a trifle pessi- 
mistic. ‘It would be a revelation to people endowed with a 
large share of worldly riches to be present at a meeting of 
the British Association for the Advancement of Science con- 
cerned with the allocation of grants for scientific purposes. 
Thirty or forty of the leading men of science in the British 
Isles debate for several hours how to divide the sum of about 
£1,000, which represents the amount available from the sale 
of tickets at each annual meeting. There are many applica- 
tions for grants from committees of each of the twelve sections 
of the Association, and the amount required has usually to 
be whittled down to £5 or £10, which often does not cover 
the expense of stationery and postage of a research committee. 
Not one penny goes into the pockets of the men who are con- 
ducting the researches, yet claim after claim has to be passed, 
or reduced to its lowest limits, because the fund is miserably 
inadequate to meet the demands made upon it. . . . While the 

* We notice that a well known and much advertised editor of one of 
our weekly papers, writing in a Sunday paper recently, says the human 
body consists of ‘a mere chemical compound of gas |!| and carbon and 
lime, synthesised.’—Ep. 

Naturalist, 
