cientific
bone that has meat on it, eagerly enough; but if the scientific man
comes for a bone or a crust to us, that is another story. What have we
publicly done for science? We are obliged to know what o'clock it is,
for the safety of our ships, and therefore we pay for an observatory;
and we allow ourselves, in the person of our Parliament, to be annually
tormented into doing something, in a slovenly way, for the British
Museum; sullenly apprehending that to be a place for keeping stuffed
birds in, to amuse our children. If anybody will pay for his own
telescope, and resolve another nebula, we cackle over the discernment
as if it were our own; if one in ten thousand of our hunting squires
suddenly perceives that the earth was indeed made to be something else
than a portion for foxes, and burrows in it himself, and tells us where
the gold is, and where the coals, we understand that there is some use
in that; and very properly knight him; but is the accident of his
having found out how to employ himself usefully any credit to us? (The
negation of such discovery among his brother squires may perhaps be
some discredit to us, if we would consider of it.) But if you doubt
these generalities, here is one fact for us all to meditate upon,
illustrative of our love of science. Two years ago there was a
collection of the fossils of Solenhofen to be sold in Bavaria; the best
in existence, containing many specimens unique for perfectness, and
one, unique as an example of a species (a whole kingdom of unknown
living creatures being announced by that fossil). This collection, of
which the mere market worth, among private buyers, would probably have
been some thousand or twelve hundred pounds, was offered to the English
nation for seven hundred; but we would not give seven hundred, and the
whole series would have been in the Munich Museum at this moment, if
Professor Owen[10] had not with loss of his own time, and patient
tormenting of the British public in person of its representatives, got
leave to give four hundred pounds at once, and himself become
answerable for the other three! which the said public will doubtless
pay him eventually, but sulkily, and caring nothing about the matter
all the while; only always ready to cackle if any credit comes of it.
Consider, I beg of you, arithmetically, what this fact means. Your
annual expenditure for public purposes (a third of it for military
apparatus), is at least fifty millions