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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXX. No. 765 



rupled. As the president of a scientific 

 association I hope I may be pardoned if I 

 point out that even the enterprise and 

 energy of your people and the richness of 

 your country would have been powerless to 

 effect this change without the resources 

 placed at their disposal by the labors of 

 men of science. 



The eminence of my predecessors in the 

 chair at the meetings of the British Asso- 

 ciation in Canada makes my task this even- 

 ing a difficult one. The meeting at Mon- 

 treal was presided over by Lord Rayleigh, 

 who, like Lord Kelvin, his colleague in the 

 chair of Section A at that meeting, has left 

 the lion's mark on every department of 

 physics, and who has shown that, vast as 

 is the empire of physics, there are still men 

 who can extend its frontiers in all of the 

 many regions under its sway. It has been 

 my lot to succeed Lord Rayleigh in other 

 offices as well as this, and I know how diffi- 

 cult a man he is to follow. 



The president of the second meeting in 

 Canada— that held in 1897 at Toronto- 

 was Sir John Evans, one of those men who, 

 like Boyle, Cavendish, Darwin, Joule and 

 Huggins, have, from their own resources 

 and without the aid derived from official 

 positions or from the universities, made 

 memorable contributions to science: such 

 men form one of the characteristic features 

 of British science. May we not hope that, 

 as the knowledge of science and the interest 

 taken in it increase, more of the large num- 

 ber of men of independent means in our 

 country may be found working for the 

 advancement of science, and thereby ren- 

 dering services to the community no less 

 valuable than the political, philanthropic 

 and social work at which many of them 

 labor with so much zeal and success ? 



I. can, however, claim to have some ex- 

 perience of, at any rate, one branch of 

 Canadian science, for it has been my privi- 



lege to receive at the Cavendish Laboratory 

 many students from your universities. 

 Some of these have been holders of what 

 are known as the 1851 scholarships. These 

 scholarships are provided from the surplus 

 of the Great Exhibition of 1851, and are 

 placed at the disposal of most of the 

 younger universities in the British Empire, 

 to enable students to devote themselves for 

 two or three years to original research in 

 various branches of science. I have had 

 many opportunities of seeing the work of 

 these scholars, and I should like to put on 

 record my opinion that there is no educa- 

 tional endowment in the country which has 

 done or is doing better work. 



I have had, as I said, the privilege of 

 having as pupils students from your uni- 

 versities as well as from those of New 

 Zealand, Australia and the United States, 

 and have thus had opportunities of com- 

 paring the effect on the best men of the 

 educational system in force at your uni- 

 versities with that which prevails in the 

 older English universities. Well, as the 

 result, I have come to the conclusion that 

 there is a good deal in the latter system 

 which you have been wise not to imitate. 

 The chief evil from which we at Cambridge 

 suffer and which you have avoided is, I am 

 convinced, the excessive competition for 

 scholarships which confronts our students 

 at almost every stage of their education. 

 You may form some estimate of the preva- 

 lence of these scholarships if I tell you that 

 the colleges in the University of Cajnbridge 

 alone give more than £35,000 a year in 

 seholai'ships to undergraduates, and I sup- 

 pose the case is much the same at Oxford. 

 The result of this is that preparation for 

 these scholarships dominates the education 

 of the great majority of the cleverer boys 

 who come to these universities, and indeed 

 in some quarters it seems to be held that 

 the chief duty of a schoolmaster, and the 



