474 Encouragement of Scientific Research. [Odlober, 
able difference between the Continental and the English 
colleges. The most brilliant and honoured names in 
German science, Woehler, the Roses, Mitscherlich, 
Bunsen, Hofmann, the great Liebig himself — the men 
who uphold the splendid intellectual reputation of 
their country, are university professors. In England, 
on the contrary, the professors, college lecturers, and 
by whatever other name our university teachers may 
be known, are not as a class distinguished for original 
research. Few of them, indeed, could or would even 
claim to rank with the representative men of British 
science. This broad distinction, involving as it does the 
admission that our professorial chairs at present do not 
form prizes for scientific distinction nor positions where 
science may be successfully cultivated, is considered by the 
writer as due to some difference in national character. We 
think we can give a more correct explanation. The German 
professor wins his chair by virtue of a reputation based on 
research. On the amount, the importance, and the success 
of his subsequent investigations depends the number of 
students who flock to his leCture hall, and, in the case of the 
physical sciences, who seek to work under his supervision. 
As a matter of course, his income, his standing with the 
Senate and with the Government rise in the same pro- 
portion. Decorations, titles of nobility, honours of every 
kind beckon him on. The most eminent universities outbid 
each other for his services. With such rewards held out, 
to be gained by research, and by that means only, is it any 
wonder that the German professor “ works,” even if he has 
not— which is rarely wanting, a sincere and intense love for 
its own sake ? And not only is he diligent in his own 
person. He selects his more promising students, places his 
ideas in their hands, assists them with his advice and 
suggestions, and associates their names with his own in the 
published results. He thus makes his laboratory, whether 
physical, chemical, or biological, a very focus of healthy and 
intense scientific activity. At the risk of somewhat antici- 
pating ourselves, we cannot help here remarking that 
Germany holds no exclusive patent right for arrangements 
which not only commend themselves to our common sense, 
but which have worked so well in adbual pradfice. 
The position of an English university professor is almost 
in all points the opposite. To students, whose great objedt 
is not to be initiated into adtual research, whether scientific, 
literary, historical, or theological, not to hear novel and 
profound ideas fresh from the lips of the master-minds of 
