Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/571

Rh the papers included a survey of the relation of solar and terrestrial changes by Sir Norman Lockyer. The new discoveries regarding the constitution of matter and radiation, a scientific advance the far-reaching character of which we can scarcely appreciate, was naturally prominent in the physical section. The papers included one by Professor Rutherford, of Montreal, whose important investigations on the emanations from radium were described by Sir Oliver Lodge in a recent issue of the The subject chosen for special discussion in the chemical section was 'Combustion.' The geological section conflicted with the International Congress of Geology at Vienna, but the program contained many papers. The subject of 'fertilization' was especially discussed in the zoological section. Professor E. B. Wilson, of Columbia University, being one of those taking part. The British Antarctic Expedition was naturally the subject of special interest to the geographers, while the fiscal questions brought forward by Mr. Chamberlain's proposed abandonment of free trade attracted the economists.

The association will meet next year at Cambridge under the presidency of Mr. Arthur Balfour, the prime minister; the following year the meeting will be in South Africa

presidential address of Sir Norman Lockyer before the British Association was entitled 'The Influence of Brain Power on History.' The speaker laid special stress on the need of greater endowments for higher education and research from the government, and advocated duplicating the Navy estimates of 1888-9, £24.000,000. and devoting that amount to the in crease of Great Britain's brain power. He said: Our position as a nation, our success as merchants, are in peril, chiefly—dealing with preventable causes—because of our lack of completely efficient universities and our neglect of research.

What are the facts relating to private endowment in this country? In spite of the munificence displayed by a small number of individuals in some localities, the truth must be spoken. In depending in our country upon this form of endowment we are trusting to a broken reed. If we take the twelve English university colleges, the forerunners of universities unless we are to perish from a lack of knowledge, we find that private effort during sixty years has found less than £1,000,000; that is, £2,000,000 for buildings and £40,000 a year's income. This gives us an average of £166,000 for buildings and £3,300 for yearly income.

What is the scale of private effort we have to compete with in regard to the American universities? In the United States, during the last few years, universities and colleges have received more than £40,000,000 from this source alone; private effort supplied nearly £7,000,000 in the years 1898-1900.

Next consider the amount of state aid to universities afforded in Germany. The buildings of the new University of Strasburg have already cost nearly £1,000,000; that is, about as much as has yet been found by private effort for buildings in Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Bristol, Newcastle and Sheffield. The government's annual endowment of the same German university is more than £49.000.

When we consider the large endowments of university education both in the United States and Germany, it is obvious that state aid only can make any valid competition possible with either. The more we study the facts, the more statistics are gone into, the more do we find that we, to a large extent, lack both of the sources of endowment upon one or other or both of which other nations depend. We are