Scholarships. Next we have the resources of our universities, which have scarcely begun to apply themselves to the task. I need do no more than allude to the Cavendish Laboratory, or to the Physiological School at Cambridge, where a simple college tutor of rare ability, and of still more rare sympathy and energy, has in ten years achieved results which we need not shrink from comparing with those of the great Continental laboratories. The magnificent Museum of Anatomy, maintained by the College of Surgeons almost entirely out of their own funds, is another instance of private care for science to which we find no parallel abroad; and the Zoölogical Society wisely spends a large part of its income in prosecuting comparative anatomy, and in publishing its beautifully illustrated memoirs.
But besides the efforts of scientific bodies and the wealth of our national universities, we may surely look to the public spirit of ancient companies and corporations to do something for the cause of science. In the middle ages our country was covered with parish churches by private munificence; in the sixteenth century most of our public and grammar schools were endowed; in later times our great religious and charitable societies were founded. May we not hope that, before the close of the present century, the discriminating knowledge which alone prevents gifts of money from being a curse instead of a blessing to a community, may lead to the establishment of libraries, and museums, and laboratories by universities and towns, which shall bear comparison, I will not say with those of Paris, or Leipsic, or Bonn, but with the poorer but scarcely less distinguished schools of Heidelberg and Göttingen, of Würzburg and of Utrecht?
Where we have institutions already under government control and patronage, let them be maintained as efficiently and liberally as possible. The British Museum, and its library, the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, and the Royal Gardens at Kew (happily preserved for the present from the short-sighted eagerness of those who would destroy their scientific value—these are great national institutions of which we are justly proud. Successive governments will have enough to do to maintain their efficiency and to guard them from incompetent interference.
Whatever may be thought of the duty of the state directly to encourage the pursuit of animal and vegetable physiology, one would have supposed that at least what diplomatists call a benevolent neutrality would be shown to a pursuit so laborious and costly, which demands trained workmen and the devotion of a lifetime, which is so important for the national wealth and health, and which, by reason, by experience, and by testimony, we know to be the only guarantee for advance in the various branches of the healing art. Why is it then that institutions which owe nothing to government assistance, and men who spend their time and talents in self-denying and unre-
