commonly prove to be the first steps to deductions and discoveries that revolutionize the conditions of civilized society. Every point that occurs as involving some insufficiently examined element, must be viewed as a herald that promises to increase and compact man's knowledge of law and his power over material nature. No one who had chanced to observe the Bologna Professor of Anatomy's pretty and apparently somewhat puerile dealing with the contractions of dead frogs, could ever have conceived that there was in those experiments the first step towards the utilization of a power which was waiting the bidding of human intelligence to cover the earth with a network of instantaneous communication, and to enable men to converse and consult together with safety and ease, while boisterous oceans of thousands of miles' span were heaving between them. If the lead of Galvani's experiment had not been tracked out as it was, electric telegraphy would most probably still have been an art of the future. But if there had been in Galvani's days more adequate provision for seizing and following out that lead, it is equally probable that the Atlantic would have been bridged by the electric cable at a still earlier date in human history, and that men would have been now gathering harvest from the discovery that is not yet attainable. No one who watched the philosophers of Newton's day, amusing themselves with the production of the rainbow spectrum from coloured light, could have conceived that the little prism of glass was an instrument capable, in the hands of more modern philosophy and more advanced intelligence, of actually sounding the material conditions of the worlds and suns of space, severed from man's theatre of action by such awful voids that the mind of the investigator yet fails altogether to realize the extent of the span through which the investigation is conducted. No one who then looked at the little prism could have imagined that by it the secrets of the sun's fires were to be revealed -that by it the red flames of the total Solar Eclipse, then only observable during about six minutes at rare intervals, would be turned into objects of daily and continuous study and record,—that by it the proper motion of the remote fixed star, which was rushing directly away from the observer, would be detected and measured. Yet all this has now been accomplished by the application of the prism to the Spectroscope, and it is manifest to every thoughtful mind that this wonderful instrument is only yet on the threshold of a mighty career.

But it should be at once understood that, whilst every point of suggestion and possible investigation should be eagerly seized and surely tracked, a natural division of the labour is fixed by circumstance. There are investigations quite sure to be provided for by individual taste and enterprise; while there are others that necessarily require forethought and organization, and that will never be

carried out unless they are insured in some way by the action and at the cost of the general community. The exact line of this practical distinction will, in all probability, be found to be settled by the need for expensive appliances, permanently appropriated buildings, and continuous action steadily sustained through long periods. These are the conditions which private enterprise cannot and, excepting in the rarest instances, will not provide, and which will not be furnished unless they are supplied on the urgent call of an enlightened community sensible of their need. To take as one prominent instance of the field that has to be occupied by system and organization: How numerous are the sustained investigations that are required into the properties of the various materials employed in the useful arts! Who can yet explain the thousand forms which are assumed by iron, and the thousand changes the metal undergoes under the slightest variety of handling? all of which have direct bearings upon the economies, and, in these recent days of multiplied marvels, even upon the safety of human life. The ordinary alloys of the mechanic-brass, gun-metal, bell-metal, and their congeners,-are all universally cast by the rule of thumb. Upon a recent occasion, when it was found to be highly desirable to introduce large castings of aluminium bronze into the frames of the large theodolites prepared to bear the strain of central stations of observation in the Indian Geodetical Survey, this was done to a considerable degree with the most promising effect, but it was found to be absolutely impracticable to carry the principle out to the desired extent, on account of the want of all appliances for dealing with such masses of a new alloy. In yet higher branches of the application of science, man is still more in the dark. The most intelligent mechanics at this moment know literally nothing as to what is the best material for the construction of the linear measures, on the truthfulness of which all the value of geodetical measures depends; neither can they say whether any material that can be employed for this purpose will retain its dimensions and co-efficient of expansion unaltered through long intervals of time. This one investigation alone requires a special building devoted to the task, and long years of close, continuous, and systematic observation. If there were such a thing as a building properly devised and prepared for investigating generally the properties of the metals, fresh work and useful results would never fail it, so long as metals are used by man. The course that has been taken by the Prussians in forming the Hoffmann Laboratory at Berlin is certainly one which may be accepted as an example of one way in which the forward movement of science may be quickened without entailing any risk of doing harm as well as good. If buildings designed for special work were placed not in, but accessibly near, to the largest and most important towns of the kingdom, combining

in their construction the four prime essentials of rigid stability, free command of light, provision for the maintenance of any required temperature, and quietude, so that they could be used by all who could show that they had really work to do in them, the cost of their establishment would most certainly very soon be returned manifold to the community.

For the thinkers and social philosophers of England should never lose sight of one great fact that underlies this question, and certainly will continue so to do under all circumstances and events; -namely, that scientific work richly pays the community, but does not pay the man. Upon the whole it may be said that the chief discoveries in human knowledge are made by individuals who labour hard at some daily drudgery for a livelihood, and then spend their savings and, as innumerable dark pages of human history show, too often something beyond their savings, to benefit their kind, carrying, as their own reward for the work, privation and impoverishment to the brink of early graves. It certainly is no very rash or bold step to assume that something is wanting in social arrangements where this has to be said of a nation that is at the present time adding millions of pounds sterling every year to its accumulated wealth, in the main drawn from improvements in science.

The large world of scientific men, properly so called, are upon the whole ripe for the recognition of the need for some kind of increased facility for carrying on severe research. This is at once apparent whenever the topic is introduced in general conversation. The main point of difficulty, so far as scientific men are concerned, is the question of the best means of doing what is admitted to be so imperatively called for. Many in the ranks of science believe that the work would be most surely and most satisfactorily performed by the Government, and that it even could be efficiently performed by no other agency. Others, on the contrary, conceive that scientific men can manage their own affairs best, without any extraneous interference, and that any meddling of the state would tend to cripple and lethargize, rather than to quicken and strengthen. There is obviously much to be said on both sides in this particular bearing; and it is therefore well that the issue should be fairly joined, and that much should be said, as now certainly will be the

case.

The objection of scientific men to state action seems, however, principally to rest on a threefold ground. There seems to be a sort of general notion that statesmen do not know much about science. Added to this there is the strong fear that if the state subsidized and directed scientific investigation, science would work in leadingstrings, instead of in the absolute freedom which is the first condition of her own being, the very breath of her life. And then again there is the notion that where the state has a finger there will be

patronage, and preference of inferior agents, who have the support of friendly recommendations, to superior agents who are standing alone.

In regard to this point of view it will not be necessary to say more at present, than that these objections are all properly applicable to state "maladministration," rather than to state action. The notion that the government of an enlightened community should concern itself with facilitating and quickening the knowledge and intelligence of the people, of course presumes that the government is to be one that is in every sense worthy of the important trust. There can be no doubt that if a government is not worthy of this great trust, and is not capable of carrying out this important object, it is not worthy of being held to be a government at all. A writer in a recent number of the 'Student' has very tersely and admirably touched upon this aspect of the matter, and has given pointed expression to the true principle that has to be looked to in regard to it. He says, "As civilization advances, and political liberty extends, hostile distinctions between governments and people pass away, and nations tend to organize themselves as great co-operative societies, turning the central power in any direction consistent with individual rights, and likely to be productive of general good. There ought to be no fear of investing properly constituted governments with too much power of being useful, though there may be great necessity for constituting efficient safeguards and checks against abuse. Human progress is not likely to diminish the sphere of state action, but, on the contrary, to increase it." It is surely true that in few branches of state action have the evils alluded to less to be feared than in relation to the adoption of formal measures for the extension of science. So far as the experiment has been tried, there has been ample guarantee that where science is concerned, distinction and acknowledged ability do outweigh all other influences and considerations of whatever kind, and to an extent certainly not encountered in other departments of the public service. It is enough in illustration of this to point to the names that are found at the head of four important departments where circumstances have compelled a considerable amount of state action. An Airey directs the National Observatory. An Owen looks after the Natural History Collections of Bloomsbury. A Hooker, after years of tried and arduous labour among the Himalayas, is the presiding spirit of the treasures and glories of Kew; and in the young Mineralogical School in Jermyn Street are encountered such names as Murchison, Warrington Smyth, and Huxley.

It should also most certainly be remembered that in one particular sense science-extension enjoys a remarkable immunity from danger of noxious contamination, issuing from state contact, even over its

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near relative, science-education. It is fairly within the scope of an ardent and timid imagination to conceive that a state might attempt to indoctrinate the national mind with a certain foregone and foredetermined scheme, adapted to work towards some set purpose; but it certainly is not possible to imagine the utter absurdity of a state influencing the direction of discovery, or shaping the perceptions of new truth.

On the whole, then, the investigation which will now be formally entered upon, and which will be pressed upon public attention, will be pretty much compressed into a nutshell, and will take one clear practical issue. At a time when the surface deposits and surface leads of the great mine of theoretical and practical science are almost exhausted by individual pickers, are deep diggings to be opened out by the aid of a small driblet of the capital that has been created from the past yieldings of the property? Are civilized nations, and especially is England, where there is such isolation and concentration of life and mind-energy, to remain content to benefit by small accidental waifs and strays of discovery that fall in from time to time; or is a clear, powerful, and organized effort to be made to use the present accumulation of human intelligence as a means of quickening the acquisition of that thorough knowledge of the properties and workings of material nature, which is the essence of civilization, and the instrument by which the well-being, the high dignity, and the happiness of the human race are worked

out?

VI. THE GREAT SOLAR ECLIPSE OF AUGUST 18, 1868.

By WILLIAM CROOKES, F.R.S., &c., Editor.

THE phenomena attending a total eclipse of the sun have always been of a most impressive character, but only within a comparatively recent period have they been observed systematically, and still more recently looked forward to as an opportunity for solving many important problems in solar physics. Previous to 1860, our knowledge of the physical constitution of the sun was based almost exclusively on theoretical grounds. In that year, however, a somewhat important eclipse of the sun occurred, the line of totality passing over Spain, and expeditions from different countries were organized to observe it. The most important of these was that taken from England by Dr. Warren De la Rue, who especially devoted himself to securing photographic records of the progress of the eclipse. The point on which information was principally sought was the physical constitution of the red protuberances, for