are light, and where therefore it is to be understood that those appointed are expected to devote themselves to original scientific research. Where heavy duties are attached to offices of this kind, scientific research is necessarily checked. We have an example of this in some professorships in America, the holders of which are compelled to devote so much time to the routine of class-work, that they are barely able even to keep themselves abreast of the scientific work of the day. But in Great Britain there are several offices which would seem to have been specially designed to afford means and leisure for original scientific research. Yet, if we consider the total number of men holding such offices, their abilities, and their opportunities, we must admit that the results they achieve are not collectively so great as might be expected. In certain instances, indeed, it would almost seem as though election to these well-paid offices had been the sole end and aim of work seemingly undertaken from pure love of science, so thoroughly has original research ceased, or become unfruitful, when the desired post has been secured. We must not close our eyes to this fact, nor suffer the zeal and energy of the few to blind us to the negligence of many who hold such offices. The point is one which would have to be carefully considered in any scheme for the endowment of research. If physical research is ever to be freely endowed, some plan would have to be adopted to obtain honest and faithful workers—not men who would regard scientific discoveries only as a means of securing salaried idleness.
But most of the salaried offices at present open to science-workers have heavy, or at least wearisome, duties attached to them. A professor of science who has to attend daily in the class-room, to consider how to make clear to dull minds matters altogether familiar to him, to prepare or emend text-books, and to take also his share in the control of large bodies of young men, cannot possibly give any great portion of his energies to original research, "In a few cases," as Mr. Appleton remarks, in the paper from which I have already quoted, "a little research can be done; in the majority of probably the best instances, all that is possible to the teacher is to keep himself abreast of that which is being accomplished by others; in too many, it is to be feared that even this is rendered impracticable by the exigencies of continual publicity," This publicity, indeed, must be of all others the most annoying hindrance to scientific research, I say must be, because my own course of life (except for occasional short intervals, at my own choice and under my own control) has been so completely that of the recluse, that I can only imagine the effects of a continued slavery to "the exigencies of publicity," Yet I have seen enough to feel assured that what Mr, Appleton describes as "the available store of nervous power" must be drawn upon far too largely, in most instances, to leave much energy for original research.
There remains, so far as the association of science and education is
