Fig. 47.
The Laboratory of the Marine Biological Association on the Citadel Hill, Plymouth, overlooking Plymouth Sound. The laboratory was built with the aid of funds raised by public subscription and a contribution of £5,000 by H.M. Government, and cost £12,200. The Association has expended, exclusive of this sum, since the opening of the laboratory in 1884, about £62,000, or an average of £3,000 a year on the maintenance of the laboratory, steam-boat and fishing-boats, and in payment of a staff of scientific observers. Of this sum the Government has contributed one-third, the rest has come from private donations and subscriptions, and from the “earnings” of the laboratory by sale of specimens, admission fees to the tank-room, &c. The journal of the Association, published at intervals, records a vast amount of scientific work, advancing our knowledge of marine life and of the life-history of fishes.
In addition to the above expenditure and results, the Association has superintended and most carefully directed the expenditure of £6,000 a year during the past five years in the investigation of the southern area of the North Sea and of the Channel at the request of H.M. Government, the work being part of the International Investigation of the North Sea. The very voluminous results of these inquiries are published in special reports by the International Committee. Full particulars of the work of the Marine Biological Association can be obtained from Dr. E. J. Allen, the Director, the Laboratory, Citadel Hill, Plymouth, who will also receive donations and applications for membership of the Association.
One of the most solid tests of the esteem and value attached to scientific progress by the community is the dedication of large sums of money to scientific purposes by its wealthier members. We know that in the United States such gifts are not infrequent; they are rare in this country. It is, therefore, with especial pleasure that I call attention to a great gift to science in this country made only a few years ago. Lord Iveagh has endowed the Lister Institute, for researches in connection with the prevention of disease, with no less a sum than a quarter of a million pounds sterling. This is the largest gift ever made to science in this country, and will be productive of great benefit to humanity. The Lister Institute took its origin in the surplus of a fund raised (at my suggestion and with my assistance as secretary) by Sir James Whitehead when Lord Mayor, some sixteen years ago, for the purpose of making a gift to the Pasteur Institute in Paris, where many English patients had been treated, without charge, after being bitten by rabid dogs. Three thousand pounds was sent to M. Pasteur, and the surplus of a few hundred pounds was made the starting-point of a fund which grew, by one generous gift and another, until the Lister Institute on the Thames Embankment at Chelsea was set up on a site presented by that good and high-minded man, the late Duke of Westminster.
Many other noble gifts to scientific research have been made in this country during the period on which we are looking back. Let us be thankful for them, and admire the wise munificence of the donors. But none the less we must refuse to rely entirely on such liberality for the development of the army of science, which has to do battle for mankind against the obvious disabilities and sufferings which afflict us and can be removed by knowledge. The organisation and finance of this army should be the care of the State.
It is a fact which many who have observed it regret very keenly, that there is to-day a less widespread interest than formerly in natural history and general science, outside the strictly professional arena of the school and university. The field naturalists among the squires and the country parsons seem nowadays not to be so numerous and active in their delightful pursuits as formerly, and the Mechanics’ Institutes and Lecture Societies of the days of Lord Brougham have given place, to a very large extent, to musical performances, bioscopes, and other entertainments, more diverting, but not really more capable of giving pleasure than those in which science was popularised. No doubt the organisation and professional character of scientific work are to a large extent the cause of this falling-off in its attraction for amateurs. But perhaps that decadence is also due in some measure to the increased general demand for a kind of manufactured gaiety, readily sent out in these days of easy transport from the great centres of fashionable amusement to the provinces and rural districts.
Before concluding this retrospect, I would venture to allude to the relations of scientific progress to religion. Putting aside the troubles connected with special creeds and churches and the claims of the clerical profession to certain funds and employments to the exclusion of laymen, it should, I think, be recognized that there is no essential antagonism between the scientific spirit and what is called the religious sentiment. ‘Religion,’ said Bishop Creighton, ‘means the knowledge of our destiny and of the means of fulfilling it.’ We can say no more and no less of Science. Men of Science seek, in all reverence, to discover the Almighty, the Everlasting. They claim sympathy and friendship with those who, like themselves, have turned away from the more material struggles of human life, and have set their hearts and minds on the knowledge of the Eternal.