Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/506

492 science. But, supposing all this had been obtained at the nation's expense, and the promise had been held out that the means of predicting weather would be the reward, the non-scientific tax-paying community might not improbably inquire what was the worth of these discoveries to the nation or to the world at large. Be it understood that I am not here using the cui-bono argument. As a student of science, I utterly repudiate the notion that, before scientific researches are undertaken, it must be shown that they will pay. But it is one thing to adopt this mean and contemptible view of scientific research, and quite another to countenance projects which are based ab initio upon the ground that they will more than repay their cost. Now, I think, if the nation made the inquiry above indicated, and under the circumstances mentioned, it would be very difficult to give a satisfactory reply. The tax-payers would say: "We have supplied so many thousands of pounds to found national observatories for the cultivation of the physics of science, and we have paid so many thousands of pounds yearly to the various students of science who have kindly given their services in the management of these observatories; let us hear what are the utilitarian results of all this outlay. We do not want to hear of scientific discoveries, but of the promised means of predicting the weather." The answer would be: "We have found that storms in the tropics are rather more numerous in some years than others, the variations having a period of eleven years; we can assert pretty confidently that auroras follow a similar law of frequency; southwest winds blow more commonly at Oxford but less commonly elsewhere, when the sun-spots, following the eleven-year period, are at a maximum; and more rain falls with southwesterly winds than with southeasterly winds at Oxford and elsewhere, but less at St. Petersburg and elsewhere, when sun-spots are most numerous, while the reverse holds when the spots are rare." I incline to think that, on being further informed that these results related to averages only, and gave no means of predicting the weather for any given day, week, or month, even as respects the unimportant points here indicated, the British tax-payer would infer that he had thrown away his money. I imagine that the army of observers who had gathered these notable results would be disbanded rather unceremoniously, and that for some considerable time science (as connected, at any rate, with promised "utilitarian" results) would stink in the nostrils of the nation.

But this is very far, indeed, from being all. Nay, we may almost say that this is nothing. Astronomers know the great spot-period; they have even ascertained the existence of longer and shorter periods less marked in character; and they have ascertained the laws according to which other solar features besides the spots vary in their nature. It is certain that whatever remains to be discovered must be of a vastly less-marked character. If, then, the discovery of the most striking law of solar change has led to no results having the slightest