Professor Owen's Address. 391 



"Addresses," pregnant with deep thought, good sense, and right 

 feeling, which have placed the name of Prince Albert high in the 

 esteem of the intellectual classes, and have engraven it deeply in 

 the hearts of the humblest of Her Majesty's subjects. 



On the part of the State, sums continue to be voted in aid of 

 the means independently possessed by the British Museum and 

 the Royal Society, whereby the Natural History Collections in the 

 first are extended and the more direct scientific aims of the latter in- 

 stitution are advanced. TheBotanical Gardens and Museum at Kew, 

 and the Museum of Practical Geology in Jermyn Street, are examples 

 of the national policy in regard to Science, of which we can hard- 

 ly over-esiimate the importance. Most highly and gratefully 

 also do we appreciate the co-operation of the " Board of Trade" 

 with our meteorologist, by the recent formation of the depart- 

 ment for the collection of meteorological observations made at 

 sea. But not by words only would, or does, Science make return 

 to Goverments fostering and aiding her endeavours for the public 

 weal. Every practical application of her discoveries tends to the 

 same end as that which the enlightened statesman has in view. 

 The steam-engine in its manifold applications, the crime-decreas- 

 ing gas-lamp, the lightning conductor, the electric telegraph, the 

 law of storms, and rules for the mariner's guidance in them, the 

 power of rendering surgical operations painless, the measures for 

 preserving public health, and for preventing or mitigating epide- 

 mics, — such are among the more important practical results of 

 pure scientific research with which mankind have been blessed 

 and States enriched. They are evidence unmistakeable of the 

 close affinity between the aims and tendencies of Science and 

 those of true State policy. In proportion to the activity, produc- 

 tivity, and prosperity of a community is its power of responding 

 to the calls of the Finance Minister. By a far-seeing one, the man 

 of science will be regarded with a favourable eye, not less for un- 

 looked-for streams of wealth that have already flowed, but for 

 those that may in future arise, out of the applications of the ab- 

 stract truths to the discovery of which he devotes himself. This 

 may, indeed, demand some measure of faith on the part of the 

 practical statesman. For who that watched the philosophic Black 

 experimenting on the abstract nature of Caloric could have fore- 

 seen that his discovery of latent heat would be the stand point of 

 Watt's invention of a practically operative steam engine ! How 

 little could the observer of Oersted's subtle arrangements for con- 



