THE GREAT BRIDGE AXD ITS LESSONS. 339 



the solar radiation is more intense and more constant than in Paris. 

 The engraving correctly represents the arrangement of the apparatus. 

 M. Pifre's insolator is shown in the center, with its great parabolic 

 mirror. The engine which it drove is shown by the side of it, while 

 on the right and in the foreground may be seen the press printing the 

 journal. We have a right to believe that heliodynamics may at some 

 future time be usefully and profitably enrployed in hot countries. 



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THE GEEAT BRIDGE AND ITS LESSONS. 



Address bt ABRAM S. HEWITT. 



TWO hundred and seventy years ago the good ship Tiger, com- 

 manded by Captain Adraien Block, was burned to the water's 

 edge as she lay at anchor, just off the southern end of Manhattan 

 Island. Her crew, thus forced into winter quarters, were the first 

 white men who built and occupied a house on the land where New 

 York now stands ; " then," to quote the graphic language of Mrs. 

 Lamb, in her history of the city, " in primeval solitude, waiting till 

 commerce should come and claim its own. Nature wore a hardy 

 countenance, as wild and as untamed as the savage landholders. Man- 

 hattan's twenty-two thousand acres of rock, lake, and rolling table- 

 land, rising at places to a height of one hundred and thirty-eight feet, 

 were covered with somber forests, grassy knolls, and dismal swamps. 

 The trees were lofty, and old, decayed, and withered limbs contrasted 

 with the younger growth of branches ; and wild flowers wasted their 

 sweetness among the dead leaves and uncut herbage at their roots. 

 The wanton grape-vine swung carelessly from the topmost boughs of 

 the oak and the sycamore ; and blackberry and raspberry bushes, like 

 a picket-guard, presented a bold front in all possible avenues of ap- 

 proach. The entire surface of the island was bold and granitic, and 

 in profile resembled the cartilaginous back of the sturgeon." This 

 primeval scene was the product of natural forces working through 

 uncounted periods of time ; the continent slowly rising and falling in 

 the sea like the heaving breast of a world asleep ; glaciers carving 

 patiently through ages the deep estuaries ; seasons innumerable cloth- 

 ing the hills with alternate bloom and decay. 



The same sun shines to-day upon the same earth ; yet how trans- 

 formed ! Could there be a more astounding exhibition of the power 

 of man to change the face of Nature than the panoramic view which 

 presents itself to the spectator standing upon the crowning arch of the 

 bridge whose completion we are here to-day to celebrate in the honored 

 presence of the President of the United States, with their fifty mill- 

 ions ; of the Governor of the State of New York, with its five millions ; 



