7 94 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



constructing an electric railway between Northumberland Avenue and 

 "Waterloo Station. Again, at the Paris Exhibition, an enterprising 

 firm of agriculturists showed land-plowing by electricity, and, in fact, 

 the application of electricity to innumerable useful purposes was illus- 

 trated rock-boring, newspaper-printing, driving of sewing-machines, 

 embroidery, leather-work, glass-cutting, wood-carving, lifts raised, ven- 

 tilation assisted, etc. I am looking forward to the Crystal Palace Ex- 

 hibition with great interest, to see how far these exhibits will be 

 repeated. The exhibition will be well worth a visit ; in fact, all ex- 

 hibitions are worth visiting, for they excite interest, they induce 

 every one, more or less, by generating curiosity, to add to his knowl- 

 edge, they honestly stimulate national as well as individual competi- 

 tion, and they always result in the enlargement of the useful applica- 

 tion of a power like that of electricity, because a man of one trade 

 who sees electricity used in another trade can not resist thinking out 

 whether it can not also be usefully applied to his own purposes. We 

 sometimes hear electricity spoken of as a mysterious agency, and some- 

 times as a wild, untamed beast. It is only mysterious to the ignorant, 

 and it is only untamed to the unskilled. I hope that the promise I 

 made to you at first starting, that you would leave this room with a 

 fair knowledge of how the electric light is produced, has been fulfilled, 

 and I can only add that electricity will always prove an obedient slave 

 to those who take the trouble to understand it ; but it may prove, and 

 it has proved, a very dangerous ally to the ignorant and the unskilled. 



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MODEEN EXPLOSIVES. 



By BENJAMIN VAUGHAN ABBOTT. 



IS any one noting the loss of life and property by explosions ? Can 

 not some improved measures of protection be suggested ? There 

 is great increase in the number, variety, and potential energy of ex- 

 plosives, and they are causing a startling number of disasters ; and 

 these involve not only the proprietors who have the control, and the 

 hands who do the work of the magazine, mine, quarry, factory, steam- 

 ship, locomotive, in which the explosion occurs, but also the gen- 

 eral public by-standers, persons walking, riding, or lodging near, 

 passengers by train or steamboat, carriers or purchasers of dangerous 

 goods improperly packed, and many others. Recall a score of the 

 more novel and peculiar cases of the season of 1881, those which 

 represent the advance in this peril, and see if they do not indicate 

 that more stringent regulation of the subject is demanded for public 

 safety. 



There was wide-spread excitement in August when British custom- 



