Scientific Research and University Endowments

Abstract

NOTWITHSTANDING the great development of scientific education, and the firm and prominent position which Science holds in public estimation, it must be admitted that a profound dissatisfaction and anxiety are the prevailing feelings with which the conditions and prospects of English science are regarded by the cultivators of knowledge. To the outside observer these sentiments appear simply captious and unreasonable. When so much has been done, why on earth should we complain? The truth, however, unhappily is, that in the midst of our apparent abundance we have still a great deficiency; and those fruits and results of Science, in the way of scientific research and discovery, which afford the true measure of our scientific condition, have by no means proportionably increased. Indeed it may be doubted whether the annual harvest of scientific truth is even as abundant as twenty or thirty years since, when Science had hardly penetrated even the outer crust of English society. The character of our scientific periodicals is essentially altered. The Journal of the Chemical Society, for example, of which the original and proper function was to print the investigations of English chemists, now appears to exist simply to inform us of what is accomplished elsewhere. The volume for the year 1871 is a stout octavo of 1,224 pages; of these, however, not more than 154 are occupied with original communications read before the Society, while the rest of the volume is filled with innumerable abstracts of the investigations of the chemists of Germany and France. Ten years ago the same journal contained on the average at least 400 pages of original matter.