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SCIENCE. 



[Vol. II., No. St*, 



maintenance, averages £800 a year for eacb institute, 

 reaching as much as £2,000 or £3,000 a year in tlie 

 larger universities. It is the business of the pro- 

 fessor, in conjunction with his assistants and the 

 advanced students, who are admitted to work in the 

 laboratories free of charge, to carry on Investiga- 

 tions, to create new knowledge in the several domains 

 of physiology, zoology, anatomy, pathology, and bot- 

 any. It is for this that the professor receives his sti- 

 pend, and it is on his success in this field of labor 

 that his promotion to a more imijortant or better 

 paid post in another university depends. In addition 

 to and irrespective of this part of bis duties, each 

 professor is charged with the delivery of courses of 

 lectures, and of elementary instruction to the general 

 students of tlie university; and for this he is allowed 

 to charge a certain fee to each student, which be re- 

 ceives 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 profes- 

 sorial income; but it is distinctly to be understood 

 that such paymeut 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 tlie prosecution of biologi- 

 cal discovery, carried on at an annual cost to the state 

 of about £80,000, equal to about £160,000 in Eng- 

 land, providing posts of graduated value for .300 inves- 

 tigators, some of small value, sufficient to carry the 

 young student through the earlier portion of bis ca- 

 reer, whilst lie is being trained and acting as the as- 

 sistant of more experienced men; others forming the 

 sufficient but not too valuable prizes which are the 

 rewards of continuous and successful labor. 



In addition to these university institutes, there are 

 ill Germany such special laboratories of research, 

 with duly salaried staff of investigators, as the Im- 

 perial 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 comparison with the arrangements existing in 

 England, that there are, in addition to the universi- 

 ties in Germany, a number of other educational in- 

 stitutions, at least equal in number, which are known 

 as polytechnic schools, 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 uni- 

 versities, and are closely similar to those colleges 

 which have been founded of late years in the pro- 

 vincial towns of England, such as Bristol, Notting- 

 ham, and Leeds. The latter are sometimes quoted by 

 sanguine persons, who are satisfied with the neglect- 

 ed condition of scientific training and research in 

 this country, as really sufficient and adequate repre- 

 sentatives of the German universities. As a matter 

 of fact, the excellent English colleges in question do 

 not present any thing at all comparable to the ar- 



rangements of a German university, and are, in re- 

 spect of the amount of money which is expended 

 upon them, the number of their teaching-staff, and 

 the efficiency of their laboratories, inferior not meiely 

 to the smallest German university, but inferior to 

 many of the technical schools of that country. 



Passing from Germany, I would now ask your at- 

 tention for a moment to an institution which is sup- 

 ported by the French government, and which — quite 

 irrespective of the French university system, which 

 is not, on the whole, superior to our own — constitutes 

 one of the most effective arrangements, in any Euro- 

 pean state, for the production of new knowledge. 

 The institution to which I allude is the College de 

 France in Paris, — co-existing there with the Sor- 

 bonne, the ficole de m^decine, the ficole normale, 

 the Jardin des plantes, and other state-supported in- 

 stitutions, — in which opportunity is provided for 

 those Frenchmen who have tlie requisite talent to 

 pursue scientific discovery in the department of biol- 

 ogy, and in other branches of science. I particular- 

 ly mention the College de France, because it appears 

 to me that the foundation of such a college in Lon- 

 don would be one of the simplest and most direct 

 steps that could be taken towards filling, in some de- 

 gree, 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 

 considerable allowance for the expenses of the instru- 

 ments and materials required in research. The per- 

 sonal stipend of each professor is £400, which has 

 been increased by an additional £100 a year in some 

 eases from the government department charged with 

 the promotion of higher studies. The professors in 

 this institution, as in the German universities, when 

 a vacancy occurs, have the right of nominating their 

 future colleague, their recommendation being accept- 

 ed by the government. The professors are not ex- 

 pected to give any elementary instruction, but are 

 directed to carry on original investigations, in prose- 

 cuting which, they may associate 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 yeai-, upon the 

 results of the researches in which he is engaged. 

 There are at present, among the professors of the Col- 

 lege de France, four of the most distinguished among 

 contemporary students of biological science, — Pro- 

 fessor Brown-Sequard, Professor Marey, Professor 

 Balbiani, and Professor Ranvier. Every one who is 

 acquainted with the progress of discovery in physi- 

 ology, minute anatomy, and embryology, will admit 

 that the opportunities afforded to these men have not 

 been wasted. They have, as the result of the posi- 

 tion in which they have been placed, produced abun- 

 dant and most valuable work, and have, in addition, 

 trained younger men to carry on the same line of ac- 

 tivity. It was here, too, in the College de Finance, that 

 the great genius of Claude Bernard found the neces- 

 sary conditions for its development. 



