4§5 
1 8 76.] Encouragement of Scientific Research. 
be understood to mean, as we fear is sometimes the ease, 
that personal want or distress may drive a man to scientific 
investigation who, if in better circumstances, would remain 
idle, we must with our whole soul protest against an absurdity 
so glaring. Men in distress naturally turn their attention 
to something immediately remunerative, which the most 
successful scientific investigation can rarely if ever be. 
Another consideration here suggests itself. In the two 
last centuries there were in various parts of England rich 
coal beds lying near the surface and capable of being worked 
at a comparatively small outlay. Now, these easily acces- 
sible beds being exhausted the miner is compelled to sink 
deeper, and to work at a greater cost. Not otherwise is it 
in science. The fadts and truths that lay near at hand have 
been already gathered in. We have now to go farther afield, 
to use costlier because rarer materials, to corredt the approx- 
imate determinations of our predecessors, and in so doing to 
employ expensive instruments of precision. Little could be 
done in these days with apparatus such as that used by 
Dalton or by Davy in the outset of his career. Hence it has 
become more difficult for a poor man, unaided, to win his 
way to eminence. 
With Mr. Sorby we admit that there are here and there 
exceptional positions in some of our manufadturing establish- 
ments where at any rate chemical and physical research may 
be carried on. But such opportunities are rare indeed. A 
“ works 5 chemist 55 generally finds his whole time absorbed 
in routine duties, and is merely tantalised by opportunities 
of which he may not avail himself, phenomena which he is 
debarred from examining, and suggestions which he must 
suppress. We have known a “works 5 chemist” grossly in- 
sulted by the head of the establishment for having called 
his attention in private to an abnormal amount of arsenic in 
a sample of pyrites. “ Determine nothing in future in 
pyrites but sulphur, copper, and silver” was the command. 
For sciences other than chemistry or physics manufactures 
afford little scope. 
We must therefore pronounce it a delusion to expedt that 
research can, to any worthy extent, be carried on “ in the 
intervals of business,” and must return to the conclusion 
that the nation which wants it and must have it must be 
prepared to endow it. But how ? 
Our first reply to this question brings us in immediate 
contest with the vexed topic of “ university reform,” and so 
lands us in a region of political and theological quarrels. 
When men cast about for funds for the endowment of re- 
