not having pleaded their own cause; such men have been so absorbed in the more important occupation of discovery, that they have, probably more than any other class of persons, neglected to enforce the just claims of their own subject. It is, however, chiefly caused by the influence of misapplied wealth, operating through the old Universities and large public schools. The sons of the wealthy are most of them educated at those institutions, and according to evidence supplied by University authorities to Royal Commissioners, many persons send their sons to those places for other purposes than to acquire learning, and allow them too much money. The considerable wealth of

these young men supplies them with attractions which decoy them from industrious study, and the wishes of the parents and students have been largely acquiesced in by the tutors and college authorities. At our old Universities also, physical and chemical knowledge is very much less rewarded than some other subjects, though latterly a considerable improvement has been made in this respect, but even now there is not a University in the kingdom in which a knowledge in scientific research is necessary in order to obtain the highest scientific honour.^[8] In these various ways physical and chemical science has been kept very low in our chief seats of learning; and scientific research is greatly neglected by the governing authorities.

It is reasonable to suppose that Universities should be fountains of new theoretical scientific knowledge, as well as be the disseminators of it, and that they (especially the old ones with their rich endowments) would be certain to promote scientific research, as being especially a part of their functions; but such is not the case. Our old Universities have not established any professorships of original research; they make no payment for such labour, nor reimburse any expenditure incurred in such occupation, and afford but little facility for the prosecution of pure scientific inquiry. Further, they discourage scientific discovery by giving the greatest emoluments, and the

highest honours in science they have to bestow, to young men who have never made a single original research, or discovered a new fact in science. The money paid in the form of comparatively sinecure fellowships, or retiring pensions to young men in Oxford alone, "now amounts to about eighty or ninety thousand pounds a year." It may be objected that young men are not capable of doing original research, but as they do it in German Universities, they can also do it in England, if they are properly disciplined, and are not decoyed from industry by the possession or expectation of wealth. A man who has never made a scientific research is not the most worthy recipient of the highest scientific honours, and in Germany it would not be given to him; he is not properly disciplined in the detection of error or the discernment of truth in matters of science; he is deficient in accuracy of scientific judgment, and in the true spirit of scientific inquiry.