At Oxford I enjoyed the hospitality of Professor Odling, and there at dinner one evening some of my earliest recollections were excited by meeting Admiral Sir Erasmus Ommaney. My mother had come up to Oxford from Scotland, and with one of my sisters was present at this dinner. The Admiral's two sisters had been friends of my mother's early youth, and the Admiral had been a frequent visitor at North-West Castle, Stranraer. He had been a captain in one of Parry's Arctic expeditions.1 The day after this dinner I parted from my mother to keep an engagement at Cambridge, and shortly afterwards to sail for Canada. I never saw her again. She died at Dunblane two years later. 3 II. CAMBRIDGE IN 1894 Ah, Grantal Shall it ever be That I once more shall visit thee? "J. G.," in Cambridge University Magazine, 1840. 6 After the close of the Oxford meeting of the British Association, my friend John S. MacKenzie, whom I had known in Glasgow days, was kind enough to invite me to spend two or three weeks with him at Trinity College. This great kindness enabled me to see old friends -Ridgeway, Foxwell, Cunningham, Jebb and Dodds and also to make some new friends. The experience was a great delight to me. I worked in the University, or in the College Library, or in my rooms, where books were brought for me, during the day, and in the evening dined with the Fellows at Trinity, or at St. John's with Foxwell or 1 1 Sir Erasmus Ommaney commanded the small British fleet which during the Crimean War entered the White Sea. The only exploit accomplished by it was firing some round shot into the Solovietsky Monastery. On visiting the island in 1899, my brother Sam was shown some of the shot embedded in the wall of the monastery. Then Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, afterwards Professor of Philosophy, Cardiff. Then recently transferred from Cork, where he had been Professor of Greek, to Cambridge, where he became Disney Professor of Archæology. Now Sir Wm. Ridgeway, F.B.A. Herbert Somerton Foxwell, Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, and Professor of Political Economy in University College, London. 'Wm. Cunningham, D.D., Fellow of Trinity, author of The Growth of English Industry and Commerce.. Sir Richard Jebb, formerly Professor of Greek at Glasgow, in 1894 Professor of Greek at Cambridge. G. M. Dodds, Senior Tutor of Peterhouse. Stout. Sometimes I joined the Fellows at combination and sometimes I played chess with Stout in his rooms or elsewhere. Ridgeway's archæological researches had interested me for many years, and I often went out to Fen Ditton to spend the afternoon with him, and occasionally I spent some time in Foxwell's library at John's. This library, the most important collection of economic works in existence, was accumulated with enormous labour by Foxwell. Sidgwick's joke was a clever jeu d'esprit. Perhaps there is a point at which the accumulation of books, like the accumulation of anything, becomes culpable; but the collection of books upon a special subject, and the careful classification of them, is a real service to mankind. I doubt if the self-sacrificing labours of Foxwell will ever be acknowledged to the full extent of their value. He began to collect economic tracts and books at a fortunate moment. The economical changes of the seventies resulted in dispersal of many libraries which had been buried unused in country houses. These libraries often contained documents of priceless value for the economic historian. If Foxwell or someone else who might have pursued the same method had not collected them, they would in all probability have been destroyed as useless lumber, and the economic material they contained would have been irretrievably lost. It may be quite true that the collection of an individual may far exceed his own powers of digestion or use; but the value of a collection cannot be determined by such a criterion or by the estimate placed upon it by laymen who know nothing of the subject which gives the collection its character. It is often argued that great collections should be public property. This may be, but public officials are rarely competent to make special collections. These can only be made by private enthusiasts. If the intelligent formation and classification of a special library is a vice, it deserves to be called a splendid vice. Its victims are few. III. CAMBRIDGE IN 1904 The meeting of the British Association for 1904 was held at Cambridge. During the meeting I enjoyed the hospitality of Clare College. Chrystal, Professor of Mathematics at Edinburgh, was there also, and we had many causeries in the Fellows' Garden after dinner. I dined occasionally at John's with Foxwell, and at Caius with Ridgeway. I have noticed in the first part of this chapter the address of Lord Salisbury 1 Then Fellow of John's, now Professor of Logic at Oxford. as President of the British Association at the Oxford meeting of 1894. The address of his nephew, Mr. Arthur Balfour,1 as President of the Association, at Cambridge in 1904, was not less remarkable. Mr. Balfour is probably in general regarded as a more intellectual man than his uncle; but his intellectual pursuits have been rather in a philosophical than in a scientific direction. I have noticed that Lord Salisbury undertook an excursion in a field with which he was not known to be familiar, and that with a kind of sardonic humour he rode roughshod over the biologists and especially over the Darwinians. By 1904 the question of evolution had assumed a fresh phase, and the old controversies had died a natural death. Attention had come to be directed rather to the physico-chemical discoveries of Lord Rayleigh, Sir William Ramsay and the Curies than to the variation of species by natural selection or otherwise. It was appropriate, therefore, for Mr. Balfour, in his résumé of scientific progress, to take account of the new discoveries. He certainly did not do so in a commonplace manner; he was bright and amusing, but there was here also a spice of sardonic humour. Certain passages of his address were extraordinarily clever pieces of caricature. The exaggeration of them was so subtle that not immediately did it dawn upon the audience that they were listening to an elaborate joke. Doubtless upon some of the audience it did not dawn at all. I walked to my rooms with Sir William Ramsay, who modestly said that he did not understand that part of the address which referred to his particular subject. If it had been intelligible undoubtedly he would have understood it, for no one knew more about the subject than he did. Mr. Balfour is much too intelligent a man to make an unintelligible statement otherwise than consciously and with a purpose. He had the model of his uncle's elaborate joke before him, and he evidently determined to have one of his own. The joke was, of course, not at the expense of either Lord Rayleigh or Sir William Ramsay, but at the expense of the audience which customarily attends such addresses. Such audiences are usually composed of persons who know only one science and of persons who know no science. It is not easy to bamboozle a man in his own field, but it is quite easy to bamboozle him in someone else's field, while those who have no field are still more easily bamboozled. Mr. Balfour was addressing a few physical chemists upon a physico-chemical subject which was out of his range, and he was addressing a larger number of persons who knew no more about physical chemistry than he did himself. He therefore allowed Now the Earl of Balfour. his fancy to play about the subject and amused himself in the invention of portentous phrases which were intended to be mere spinning of words-spinning, however-and here was the sting of the affair— which was quite good enough for his audience. The only excursion connected with the meeting, which I attended, was a visit to Woburn Abbey, where we saw the experimental farm and the wonderful zoological garden of the Duke of Bedford. We were received by Mr. Prothero, the commissioner and the historian of the estate. The experiments at the farm relate principally to the breeding and growing of fruit, but necessarily they include many of general horticultural or agricultural bearing. I was particularly interested in the experiments upon the toxic properties of some grasses, as I had encountered this problem in the Canadian North-West. The zoological collection at Woburn is unique. No animals of a ferocious character are kept; but there are whole herds of each known species of deer, there is a herd of Prejevalski's primitive horse, herds of the four varieties of Icelandic horses, and rare animals of like character. Enormous numbers of aquatic and other birds are kept in freedom or in quasi-freedom, as are all the animals. They are not confined in houses, but have whole parks wherein to range. The zoological collection occupies many hundred acres. In the house there is one of the most remarkable collections of pictures in England. To the best of my recollection there were fourteen Holbeins of the first order in one row in a long gallery. There was by far the finest example of the work of Ferdinand Bol I have seen anywhere, and there were numerous other treasures of distinction. CHAPTER XXIV THE NORTH-WEST OF CANADA AND BRITISH COLUMBIA IN 1896 Two circumstances gave an impetus to an economic movement in Canada after the period of depression indicated in a preceding chapter.1 These were the beginning of an immigration movement from Europe and from the United States and the discovery of new gold-fields in British Columbia. These circumstances occurred almost simultaneously in the summer of 1895. Early the following summer I went westwards in order to visit the localities principally affected by the new tide of immigration and by the gold discoveries. I have already noticed the boom in the North-West which followed the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1886 and the subsequent collapse of the boom. Winnipeg had recovered from this collapse, and ten years later the optimism of the West exhibited its customary resilience. I spent a short time in Winnipeg, which impressed me as having been built upon prospective rather than upon realised economical conditions. The agricultural population of the North-West could not at that time support by any production which it might accomplish a city planned on so generous a scale. This invincibly sanguine atmosphere had its invigorating effect. I found an astonishing amount even of intellectual energy in many of the people whom I met. Compared with the sleepy and self-satisfied East, the West had at least the merit of vigour. Yet Winnipeg had clearly been built on credit; and the East had interposed its credit |