34 Canadian Record of Science. 



five hundred scholarships have been founded at an annual 

 cost of £30,000. France now recognizes that it is not by 

 the number of men under arms that she can compete with 

 her great neighbour, Germany, so she has determined to 

 equal her in intellect. You will understand why it is that 

 Germany was obliged, even if she had not been willing, to 

 spend such large sums in order to equip the university of 

 her conquered province, Alsace-Lorraine. France and Ger- 

 many are fully aware that science is the source of wealth 

 and power, and that the only way of advancing it is to 

 encourage universities to make researches and to spread 

 existing knowledge through the community. Other Euro- 

 pean nations are advancing on the same lines. Switzer- 

 land is a remarkable illustration of how a country can 

 compensate itself for its natural disadvantages by a scien- 

 tific education of its people. Switzerland contains neither 

 coal nor the ordinary raw materials of industry, and is 

 separated from other countries which might supply them 

 by mountain barriers. Yet, by a singularly good system of 

 graded schools, and by the great technical college of Zurich, 

 she has become a prosperous manufacturing country." 



After thus comparing the aids given to university and to 

 technical training on the Continent of Europe with the 

 sums given by the State for such purposes in England — 

 sums which appear magnificent, if compared with the sub- 

 sidies received by our own Eoyal Institutions — the Presi- 

 dent concludes: "Either all foreign States are strangely 

 deceived in their belief that the competition of the world has 

 become a competition of intellect, or we are marvellously un- 

 observant of the change which is passing over Europe in 

 the higher education of the people." 



In speaking of Science and Industry, Sir Lyon Playfair 

 happens, though with a different purpose in view, to touch 

 upon a subject more fully discussed by Professor Lesley in 

 his address. " Though the accumulation of facts is indis- 

 pensable to the growth of science, a thousand facts are of 

 less value to human progress than is a single one when it is 

 scientifically comprehended, for it then becomes generalized 

 in all similar cases." Passing on, however, to the practical 



