_5th._ _Extension of the Government Grant System._--During a number of years the British Government has entrusted to the Royal Society the annual sum of £1,000 for the purpose of aiding science; and that sum has been given in varying portions to different investigators who have applied for grants in aid of their expenses in making investigations. Although the total amount to be disbursed annually was not large, very few persons, qualified to make good researches, usually applied for its assistance, and it was difficult to dispose of the whole. The chief causes of this difficulty were:--a grant from the fund was an unprofitable gift to accept, because it was only sufficient to partly pay the expenses out of pocket for chemicals and apparatus, and allowed nothing for the skill, time, or labour, nor for payments made to assistants. Further, "By order of the Council, all instruments, apparatus, and drawings, made or obtained by aid of the Government Grants, shall, after serving the purpose for which they were procured, and in the absence of any specific understanding to the contrary, be delivered into the custody of the Royal Society." By far the greater part of the expense of an investigation in physics or chemistry is the exceedingly large {209} amount of time it occupies. Many necessary preliminary experiments have to be made, which yield either negative, unsuccessful, or incomplete results, and make the undertaking expensive. A good investigation in chemistry also not unfrequently costs the investigator a sovereign a day if he is wholly employed upon it. In some cases, for each £100 received as a grant, at least a £1,000, was directly and indirectly expended. Any person therefore who undertook a research became a loser, and aid from the Government Grant fund did not entirely cover his loss. Only scientific men who had other sources of income were able to avail themselves of the grants. The existence of the grants also was not widely known. The advantages of the plan were, it diminished the loss to the investigator, and the fact of being allotted a sum from the fund was considered highly creditable to the recipient. In consequence largely of the evidence collected from eminent men of science from all parts of Great Britain, and the recommendations based upon it, by the Royal Commission for the Advancement of Science, the Grant system has been extended; our Government recently placed an additional amount of £4,000 a year, for five years, to be distributed in sums at the recommendation of the Royal Society to suitable applicants, and the five years have now elapsed.