Frreuson —Address delivered before the Academy. 199 
The modified scheme, accorded us on that application, allows the 
income of the fund to be applied partly in honorary rewards for work 
done, and partly in the old manner of offermg premiums for prize 
essays on subjects prescribed. Accordingly, two years ago, a prize of 
one hundred pounds was offered for an Irish Classical Dictionary of 
the names of persons and places commemorated in published Irish 
sources. A more acceptable and entertaining work could hardly have 
been desired. Abundant material exists for its compilation ; and there 
are not wanting scholars of adequate accomplishment for the task. 
But learning of the kind desired refused to come down into that 
kind of arena. We have had no competition, and the hundred pounds 
fall back into the Prize Essay Fund. It will be the duty of the 
Council to try some other subject in which, it may be hoped, know- 
ledge may not exhibit so much coyness ; but if it be found either that 
no competitors present themselves, or that such essays as may come in 
are merely made up pro re natd—as almost all competitive accomplish- 
ment is made up—this portion of the fund must go on accumulating 
until, at some future day, the Academy may find itself compelled 
again to ask for its application to purposes of real Academic useful- 
ness; and Authority may at last recognize the fact that this Prize 
Essay Trust belongs to the class of cases which I might illustrate by 
supposing a bequest to light the city streets with oil lamps--a good 
and useful Charity a hundred years ago, but inapplicable to our present 
needs and means of illumination. 
The Prize Questions have hitherto been left to the Literary side of 
the Academy. The Committee of Science has never proposed any, 
from a conviction—I believe the result of long experience—that this 
is a mistaken way of trying to promote scientific knowledge, and that 
original investigation in that field is just as little at the beck of 
pecuniary enticement as it ism Literature, Archeology, or Criticism. 
The Committee of Science, however, has imposed on it by the 
liberality—which, on the whole, may be deemed not unwise—of our 
Government, here as in Great Britain, the application of a fund, not 
awardable on competition, but bestowable by vote of the Academy, 
for aids in the promotion of Scientific Research. A scientific investi- 
gation may, at one stage of the inquiry, have need of extended obser- 
vation, or of apparatus not at the command of any but rich men. 
The subjects at this stage are necessarily tentative, and there must be 
more or less of guess-work both in the applicant and the grantors. If 
the ultimate disappointments are more numerous than the successes, it 
is but what old experience might have led us to expect. But one 
success, really advancing useful knowledge, compensates for many 
failures. If challenged for our disposition of this Fund, we can say 
that, acting on the best advice our Committee of Science can give us, 
and proceeding in what seem the likeliest limes, we have not oftener 
been disappointed than others charged with the duty of like alloca- 
tions elsewhere. 
However stimulated—whether by little aids of this kind or by 
