Notes

Abstract

AT a recent meeting of the Trustees of the “Gilchrist Educational Trust,”they decided to appropriate a sum not exceeding 1,000l. to the promotion of scientific research, with the prospect of repeating this grant annually if it should bear adequate fruit. The plan proposed is to ask the Council of the Royal Society to make recommendations to the Trustees, stating in each case the object of the research, the qualifications of the individual by whom it is to be conducted, and the sum they propose to be assigned to him; the purpose of the grant being to assist men of science who have shown themselves capable of advancing science, and who may feel themselves precluded from devoting their time to unremunerated work, by freeing them from the necessity of giving up investigations of great promise for the sake of mere bread-earning. We believe that this important movement is due to the representations of Dr. Carpenter, the Secretary, to the Trustees, that they would be in this mode worthily applying about a fourth part of their income in meeting a great national want, and in promoting the second of the objects as to which they have an uncontrolled discretion under the will of the founder—“The benefit, advancement, and propagation of learning in every part of the world.”The Council of the Royal Society has, we understand, appointed a Committee to consider the conditions under which the Council may most fittingly undertake the responsibility of advising the Gilchrist Trustees as to the appropriation of their grants.