OCTOBEE 11, 1895.] 



SCIENCE. 



471 



to affording an object lesson to County 

 Councils in the application of science to 

 technical instruction, which would have 

 suggested the principles which would most 

 usefully guide them in the expenditure of 

 this public money. Government assistance 

 to science has been based mainljr on the 

 principle of helping voluntary effort. 



The Kew Observatory was initiated as a 

 scientific observatory by the British Associ- 

 ation. It is now supported by the Gassiot 

 trust fund, and managed by the incorporated 

 Kew Observatory Committee of the Eoyal 

 Society. This institution carries on to a 

 limited extent some small portion of the 

 class of work done in Germany by that 

 magnificent institution, the Eeichsanstalt 

 at Charlottenburg, but its development is 

 fettered by want of funds. British students 

 of science are compelled to resort to Berlin 

 and Paris when they require to compare 

 their more delicate instruments and appar- 

 atus with recognized standards. There 

 could scarcely be a more advantageous ad- 

 dition to the assistance which Government 

 now gives to science than for it to allot a 

 substantial annual sum to the extension of 

 the Kew Observatorj^, in order to develop 

 it on the model of the Eeichsanstalt. 



The various agencies for scientific educa- 

 tion have produced numerous students ad- 

 mirably qualified to pursue research ; and 

 at the same time almost every field of in- 

 dustry presents openings for improvement 

 through the development of scientific meth- 

 ods. For instance, agricultural operations 

 alone offer openings for research to the biol- 

 ogist, the chemist, the physicist, the geolo- 

 gist, the engineer, which have hitherto been 

 largely overlooked. If students do not 

 easily find employment it is chieflj' attri- 

 butable to a want of appreciation for science 

 in the nation at large. This want of appre- 

 ciation appears to arise from the fact that 

 those who nearly half a century ago directed 

 the movement of national education were 



trained in early life iu the universities, in 

 which the value of scientific methods was 

 not at that time fully recognized. Hence 

 our elementary and even our secondarj' and 

 great public schools neglected for a long 

 time to encourage the spirit of investigation 

 which develops oi'iginality. This defect is 

 diminishing daily. 



There is, however, a more intangible 

 cause which may have had infiuence on the 

 want of appreciation of science by the na- 

 tion. The Government, which lai'gely 

 profits by science, aids it with money, but 

 it has done very little to develop the na- 

 tional appreciation for science by recogniz- 

 ing that its leaders are worthy of honors 

 conferred by the State. Science is not fash- 

 ionable, and science students — upon whose 

 eiforts our progress as a nation so largely 

 depends — have not received the same meas- 

 ure of recognition which the State awards 

 to services rendered by its own oflQcials, by 

 politicians, and by the Army and by the 

 ISTavjr, whose success in future wars will 

 largely depend on the effective applications 

 of science. 



The reports of the British Association af- 

 ford a complete chronicle of the gradual 

 growth of scientific knowledge since 1831. 

 They show that the Association has ful- 

 filled the objects of its founders in promo- 

 ting and disseminating a knowledge of sci- 

 ence throughout the nation. The growing 

 connection between the sciences places our 

 annual meeting in the position of an arena 

 where representatives of the different sci- 

 ences have the opportunity of criticizing 

 new discoveries and testing the value of 

 fresh proposals, and the presidential and 

 sectional addresses operate as an annual 

 stock-taking of progress in the several 

 branches of science represented in the sec- 

 tions. Every year the field of usefulness of 

 the Association is widening. For, whether 

 with the geologist we seek to write the his- 

 tory of the crust of the earth, or with the 



