110 
“The publicity given to the opening ceremonials of the new 
science laboratories at Cambridge by the King and Queen on 
March 1 will, it may be hoped, do something to rouse those who 
are responsible for the welfare of the nation to a wider sense of 
their duties. The time has surely passed when the remarks of a 
well-known prelate and of a Prime Minister to the effect that they 
were born in a pre-scientific era could be received, if not with 
overt applause, at least with sneaking sympathy. 
luggish as we are, some progress has been made. Up tothe 
middle of the last century, and for some time after, there was 
scarcely a botanical laboratory properly so-called in the whole 
country. Now we have the Jodrell laboratory at Kew, a very 
modest institution when compared to the necessities of the case 
cellent equipment of other departments of this great 
national establishment, The Jodrell laboratory is not intended 
for instructional purposes, but chiefly for study and research, and 
much good work has been done there. 
“At Cambridge, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dublin, at University 
College, London, the Royal College of Science, and in many other 
universities, agricultural colleges and technical institutes, there are 
now more or less well equipped laboratories under competent 
direction. But these are mainly for the instruction of students. 
Research laboratories are still rare, and those willing and com- 
petent to utilize them are also few in number. This condition of 
affairs is largely due to the indifference and lack of encourage- 
ment on the part of those who ought to know better. The cui 
dono question is ever in their minds, and much too frequently on 
their lips. Abstract science does not appeal to their sympathies, 
or to their intelligence, unless some immediate practical result at 
once comes into view. en that happens, the commercial 
instinct may perchance be aroused, and they begin to ask, will 
it pay? Of course, no reader of this journal is likely to under- 
value abstract science, and most of them are well aware of the 
enormous value of the practical results that may and do result 
rom it. But even such persons must have been startled to find 
how the observations of Bower and others on the minute anatomy 
of the prothallus and spore-producing tissues of ferns, observa- 
