If this is really the state of things to which we are approaching, our
Laboratory may perhaps become celebrated as a place of conscientious
labour and consummate skill, but it will be out of place in the
University, and ought rather to be classed with the other great
workshops of our country, where equal ability is directed to more
useful ends.

But we have no right to think thus of the unsearchable riches of
creation, or of the untried fertility of those fresh minds into which
these riches will continue to be poured. It may possibly be true
that, in some of those fields of discovery which lie open to such
rough observations as can be made without artificial methods, the
great explorers of former times have appropriated most of what is
valuable, and that the gleanings which remain are sought after, rather
for their abstruseness, than for their intrinsic worth. But the
history of science shews that even during that phase of her progress
in which she devotes herself to improving the accuracy of the
numerical measurement of quantities with which she has long been
familiar, she is preparing the materials for the subjugation of new
regions, which would have remained unknown if she had been contented
with the rough methods of her early pioneers. I might bring forward
instances gathered from every branch of science, shewing how the
labour of careful measurement has been rewarded by the discovery of
new fields of research, and by the development of new scientific
ideas. But the history of the science of terrestrial magnetism
affords us a sufficient example of what may be done by Experiments in
Concert, such as we hope some day to perform in our Laboratory.

That celebrated traveller, Humboldt, was profoundly impressed with the