_6th._ _Students pursuing Research at the Universities._ In the German Universities each student is required to make an original research before he can obtain a degree in Science, and the plan has worked successfully; also in the Victoria University, Manchester, {212} several Fellowships have recently been established for the encouragement of students in original investigation. If this plan could be carried out in our old Universities it would produce most valuable results, because the governing, wealthy, and influential classes of this nation are chiefly educated at those institutions, and they would then acquire habits of more accurate scientific thought, and some knowledge of the nature and importance of scientific research, and of the essential dependence of national welfare upon it. But a great and probably insuperable obstacle exists to the carrying out of such a plan, viz., the wealth possessed by the parents of students. An original research cannot be made without considerable industry, and the greatest opponent of industry, especially with young men, is the possession or expectation of wealth. According to college tutors at our old Universities, there is no large class of industrious students at those institutions. The greatest cause of the idleness of the students is parental neglect and the habits of wealthy society. Many parents allow their sons too much money, and over-look too readily their idleness and frivolity; the young men also know their parents are rich, and act accordingly. Many persons send their sons to those places chiefly to form aristocratic acquaintances, and for other purposes than those of educational discipline and learning. The college authorities have also largely acquiesced in the wishes of the parents and students. And in this way {213} scientific research has been almost entirely excluded from our old Universities. If the present tutors and governing bodies of those Institutions cannot induce students generally to be industrious, by what means can it be expected that these young men can be persuaded to exercise the still greater degree of industry and intelligence requisite to prosecute research, whilst they are decoyed from it by the attractions of wealth? In Germany the conditions are very different, the students in the Universities of that country have much less money at their disposal. Nearly the whole of the educational courses also at the Grammar schools and other educational institutions in this country, are formed upon the plan of sending all the superior scholars to our Universities, and thus the defective state of scientific training at the Universities operates through our whole scholastic system, and depresses the entire scientific instruction of the nation. It is evident that in this way the undue wealth of this country largely retards national progress.