communication might be maintained between the city and the country. From these the besieged were enabled to annoy the enemy without being exposed to their arrows, for as they projected a little from the walls, those within them could securely assail the invaders in every direction.† The walls of Babylon,‡ Nineveh,§ and Ecbatana,|| are alone sufficient to prove the immense strength of these ancient fortifications.

Cf. Faber ibidem.

† Vitruv, i. 5. Jos. l. i. vi. 6. Bachiene, P. ii. 1. i. p. 191. 2 Chron. xxvi. 9, xxxii. 5. Ps. xlviii. 13. Jer. xxxi. 38. Zach. xiv. 10. Nehem. iii. 1, xii. 39. Cf. Faber, ibidem. ' Talmudice. 1 Bochart Phaleg, 1, 12. Jer. li. 58. § Boch. Phal. iv. 20. Paul Lucas, Voyage au Levant, ii. 2. Jon. iv. 11. Diod. Sic. li. 3, iii. 1. Mannert, v. 440. Jahns Arch. i. 1, 52. Bruns Erdbeschr. ii. 1, 199. Herod. i. 9. Ecbatana had seven walls, between each of which were houses, as fortifications round it, so that the city could not be conquered until the enemy obtained possession of all seven. Babylon and Jerusalem had three. The round towers beyond the walls were continued, at certain distances, until a sight of the nearest shepherd's tower could be obtained from one of them, that these telegraphic communications might not be interrupted. This is the sense of the Biblical phrase, from the fortified city to the shepherd's tower.-Cf. Faber, ibidem.

THE BURMAN MEDAL.

TO THE EDITOR.

SIR: I have this morning taken up the last number of the Asiatic Journal, in which, at pages 64 and 65, is a letter, signed EQUES, dated March 30. In reference to the first part of the letter, on the subject of the Burman medal, I venture to indulge a hope that it is not the intention, as therein expressed, to make any distinction in the distribution of any military honours between any part of the force employed in the late war against the Burmese territory. There never was an occasion of actual warfare in India, in which greater unanimity existed between the troops of his Majesty and those of the East-India Company, than in the operations of every kind during that war; and if one species of troops is to receive an honourable badge, which is to be withheld from the other, it cannot but produce feelings of great discontent, which are likely to be marked by acts which jealousy and disappointment would not fail to generate. I shall not descend to any minor considerations on this subject, which is of too important a nature to be lightly considered. It should be a leading principle of every public act, of whatever nature it may be, to conciliate the two services as much as possible: they are employed in the same army, in one common cause, and unanimity of feeling can alone produce unanimity and energy in action.

I shall conclude by expressing a hope, that no honourable distinction will be granted to the native that it is intended to withhold from the European soldiers or officers. I was in India the whole period of this war, and regiments of his Majesty and of the Company's forces, which served in Ava, were under my command in the presidency of Madras: they have equal claims to equal distinction.

Should this letter be deemed worthy of publication in your next number, it will be read with satisfaction by,

Sir, your constant reader,

A MAJOR-GENERAL OF HIS MAJESTY'S SERVICE.

Senior United Service Club,

May 6th, 1830.

STATE OF SCIENCE AND OF LEARNED SOCIETIES IN ENGLAND.

PROFESSOR BABBAGE has just published a small volume, the subject of which deeply affects the interests of science.* It is our conviction of this fact, and a painful sense of the justness of some of his strictures, which urge upon us the propriety, if not the duty, of directing the attention of that portion of the scientific world, by whom this Journal is read, to the powerful appeal addressed by Mr. Babbage to every genuine friend of learning, against abuses to which he ascribes the neglect and decline of science in England.

Vices of system, and defects of administration, in concerns which, however seriously they may involve the character and interests of the country, are not within reach of the ordinary authority of Government, can be corrected by the community alone, that is, by the voice of the public. To call into operation, however, this potent agent of reform, and to direct effectually its action, demand rare qualifications. Few possess the requisite degree of skill and discernment to detect the diagnostics of the disease latent in our scientific system, and few of those have the firmness to speak plainly. The remedy demands not only that the physician should be able, but that his ability should be so well ascertained that the public will place confidence in his suggestions. That the Lucasian professor of mathematics is a man of sound knowledge is, we believe, not disputed. We have no reason to suspect that any selfish or improper motive has spurred him on to the disclosures which he has made: indeed our own observation has supplied so much testimony to the truth of some of his severest strictures, that we cannot withhold our belief in the justness of the rest until their groundlessness shall be made apparent. His work is, therefore, entitled to regard.

Mr. Babbage sets out with a remark which it is mortifying to read: "it cannot have escaped the attention of those whose acquirements enable them to judge, and who have opportunities of examining the state of science in other countries, that in England, particularly with respect to the more difficult and abstract sciences, we are much below other nations, not merely of equal rank, but below several even of inferior power." This fact is too intimately connected with our political interests to be disregarded. Mr. Babbage ventures his "reflections" upon the causes of this decline, "with the confidence that nothing but the full expression of public opinion can remove the evils that chill the enthusiasm and cramp the energies of the science of England."

The defects in the system of instruction at our universities constitute, in his opinion, one of the causes of the neglect of science in this country, and that "scientific knowledge scarcely exists amongst the higher classes of society," as evinced in the discussions which arise in both houses of Parliament on any scientific question. The absence of inducements to the culti

* Reflections on the Decline of Science in England, and on some of its Causes. By Charles Babbage, Esq., Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in the University of Cambridge, and Member of several Academies. London, 1830. Fellowes and Booth.

vation of science is another reason for its retrogression. There are few, if any, professional impulses. "The pursuit of science does not, in England, constitute a distinct profession, as it does in many other countries; it is, therefore, on that ground alone, deprived of many of the advantages which attach to professions." National encouragement is intentionally withheld, on the ground that the public are the best judges of the merit of a scientific invention, and reward it in proportion, by patronizing its results. But Mr. Babbage justly observes that, however true this argument may be as a general principle, it is confined to those results of the inventive faculty which are applied to practice: all abstract truth is entirely excluded from reward. He adduces several instances to prove that long intervals frequently elapse between the discovery of new principles in science and their practical application: for example, the hydrostatic paradox, known as a speculative truth so long ago as 1600, was not applied to a practical purpose till the late Mr. Bramah contrived his machine; and the principle of the convertibility of the centres of oscillation and suspension in the pendulum, discovered by Huygens more than 150 years since, which was employed by Capt. Kater as the foundation of a most convenient practical method of determining the length of the pendulum. "Those intellectual qualifications," Mr. Babbage observes, "which give birth to new principles or to new methods, are of quite a different order from those which are necessary for their practical application." Where the Government has depended upon scientific advisers, it seems to have been sadly misdirected. The erroneous tables, on which the government annuities were granted, cost the country, it is said, a loss of between £2,000,000 and £3,000,000. "The fact of the sale of those annuities being a losing concern was long known to many, and the Governments appear to have been the last informed on the subject."

Encouragement from learned societies is a legitimate and almost the only inducement to the cultivation of science in England. One species of encouragement from this source arises from admission to the list of their members; but Mr. Babbage justly remarks, "it is clear, this envied position will be valued in proportion to the difficulty of its attainment, and also to the celebrity of those who enjoy it; and wherever the standard of scientific knowledge which qualifies for its ranks is lowered, the value of the distinction itself will be diminished." A calculation of the comparative proportion of members of learned societies to the respective populations in England, France, Prussia, and Italy, presents a very gratifying picture to those who draw conclusions from figures only. In England, where the population is twenty-two millions, the number of members of the Royal Society is 685; in France, where the population is thirty-two millions, the number of members of the Institute is 75! The analyses, which Mr. Babbage makes of the materials of which the respective aggregates consist, afford us a more accurate, but a rather less flattering, opinion of the value of our own.

In considering the "general state of learned societies in England," the author has passed some remarks upon the mode in which admissions are Asiat.Jour. N.S.VOL.2. No.6.

R

granted in several, which, for the sake of their credit, we trust are too severe. Of the Medico-Botanical Society, of which we have lately heard so much, he says, "it speedily became distinguished, not by its publications or its discoveries, but by the number of princes it enrolled in its list. It is needless now to expose the extent of its shortlived quackery; but the evil deeds of that institution will long remain, in the impression they have contributed to confirm throughout Europe of the character of our scientific establishments."

A large portion of the work is devoted to "the venerable first parent" of English and of European societies-the Royal Society. Mr. Babbage has laid before the public details with respect to the state of that body, which loudly proclaim the necessity of inquiry into its management, upon the proper conduct of which depends its utility as an auxiliary of Government as well as a director and encourager of the sciences. Of the description he gives of the practical mode in which a person may obtain admission to the honour of a fellowship in the Society we have no reason to distrust the accuracy, since it is notorious-if not in England, at least in Francethat a native of the latter country, a man quite illiterate, upon the credit of constructing a few tables requiring only a knowledge of the commonest rules of schoolboy-arithmetic, was unanimously elected F.R.S.

Mr. Davies Gilbert's qualifications for the office of president are examined by Mr. Babbage with freedom, but not with unnecessary asperity. He gives him the credit of being "a most amiable and kind-hearted man,” but he resolutely denies his fitness for the chair of the Royal Society. As this is a subject which it is not necessary for us to dwell upon minutely, we shall pass over the details regarding it in Mr. Babbage's book.

The remarks which he makes with reference to the secretaries are more immediately connected with certain irregularities or negligences which he charges upon the Society, since "it is reasonable to suppose that attention to them is within the province of its secretaries." One of these instances of neglect is that of printing amongst its Transactions a volume of astronomical observations made at Paramatta, at an observatory founded by Sir Thomas Brisbane, at his private expense, by observers and with instruments paid for by him, without any recognition of a fact so creditable to a British officer; "an omission," it is observed, "less unjust to the individual than it was injurious to English science." The next is a serious charge. "It has been publicly stated, that confidence cannot be placed in the written minutes of the Society; and an instance has been adduced, in which an entry has been asserted to have been made, which could not have been the true statement of what actually passed at the council." For the particulars of this charge, in which it is alleged that the name of Sir John Franklin was clandestinely substituted for that of Captain Beaufort, we choose to refer the reader to the work itself.

In touching upon the history of the circumstances which led to the institution of the offices of scientific advisers to the Admiralty, on the abolition of the Board of Longitude, Mr. Babbage discloses some pretty strong symptoms of government-jobbing; and he intimates, in tolerably plain.

terms, his doubts as to the competency of Captain Sabine, one of the "advisers," whose claims, he observes, "must rest on his skill in 'practical astronomy and navigation,'—a claim which can only be allowed when the scientific world are set at rest respecting the extraordinary nature of those observations contained in his work on the Pendulum." On the subject of these pendulum-experiments, Mr. Babbage has entered into a somewhat elaborate inquiry, the result of which is that it is not altogether impossible that they are accurate.

The other evidences of improper management in the Society relate to the administration of the funds, and to the medals and lectures. On the first head, we shall be content with taking one instance. The council of the Royal Society are visitors of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. The observations made there are printed by Government at a large expense, with every regard to typographical luxury, with large margins on thick paper hot-pressed. Mr. Babbage states:

Some years since, a member of the Royal Society accidentally learned that there was, at an old store-shop in Thames Street, a large quantity of the volumes of the Greenwich Observations on sale as waste paper. On making inquiry, he ascertained that there were two tons and a half to be disposed of, and that an equal quantity had already been sold for the purpose of converting it into pasteboard. The vendor said he could get fourpence a pound for the whole, and that it made capital Bristol board!

The reflections which Mr. Babbage has made upon this topic, with reference to the astronomer-royal, we do not think it expedient to cite; but we can hardly conceive that he would have ventured to print them upon slight grounds.

The irregular manner in which the royal and Copley medals have been adjudicated is pointed out by Mr. Babbage with the same freedom as distinguishes his other strictures. He accuses the council of a breach of faith in respect to the former, which it is impossible to suppose the body of the Society, between whom and the council little communication subsists, could have sanctioned.*

The leading causes of the present state of the Royal Society, Mr. Babbage considers, may be traced to the misrule to which it has been for years submitted. The officers and council, as well as the president, are, by the statutes, to be elected by the body of the Society, but in fact they are private nominations by the president, usually without notice to the council. He adds:

The Society has, for years, been managed by a party, or coterie, or by whatever other name may be most fit to designate a combination of persons united • We have observed a communication from Mr. South, one of the members of the council, published in the Times of May 8th, wherein he says: "Being engaged on a work rendered necessary by the appearance of Mr. Babbage's recent pamphlet On the Decline of Science in England, I had occasion to refer to the glass-making proceedings' of the Royal Society. On application, however, for the minutes of the sub-committee, to whose superintendence the affair had been intrusted, I found, to my astonishment, that they are not in the Society's possession. As these experiments, during the last six years, have been attended with considerable expense to the nation, and as this is not the only instance in which public documents when asked for could not be produced, may I, Mr. Editor, be permitted, through you, to request the president and council will restore them to their proper place in the Society's apartments, where they may be accessible to every member who wishes to consult them; and from which they ought never to have been removed?"