and unable to procure the instruments or books necessary to continue their researches, but persevering against hope and often dying before they had reached the end in view. Their name is legion.
Altogether, the system of help granted by the State is so bad that science has always endeavoured to emancipate itself from it. For this very reason there are thousands of learned societies organized and maintained by volunteers in Europe and America,—some having developed to such a degree that all the resources of subventioned societies, and the wealth of millionaires, would not buy their treasures. No governmental institution is as rich as the Zoological Society of London, which is supported by voluntary contributions.
It does not buy the animals which in thousands people its gardens: they are sent by other societies and by collectors of the entire world. The Zoological Society of Bombay will send an elephant as a gift; another time a hippopotamus or a rhinoceros is offered by Egyptian naturalists. And these magnificent presents are pouring in every day, arriving from all quarters of the globe—birds, reptiles, collections of insects, etc. These consignments often comprise animals that could not be bought for all the gold in the world; thus, a traveller who has captured an animal at life's peril, and now loves it as he would love a child, will give it to the Society because he is sure it will be cared for. The entrance fee paid by visitors, and they are numberless,
