NOTES BY THE EDITOR. XI 



Sir David Brewster followed, maintaining that the correspondence 

 was a forgery unparalleled in scientific or literary history, giving 

 his reasons therefor. The purpose of these documents is to show 

 that Newton had relations with French philosophers, and that his 

 views with respect to gravity, etc., were by no means so original 

 as they were thought to be. This supposed correspondence is 

 given in " Comptes Rendus," July to October, 1867, and seems to 

 bear upon its face evidence that it is not authentic, and is unjust 

 to the memory of both these eminent men. 



London " Engineering" has the following on the lull of inven- 

 tion : 



" Several years have now passed without any really great in- 

 vention, an invention capable of adding millions to the national 

 wealth. The most recent are the Bessemer process, the steam- 

 plough, submarine telegraphs, and Ransome's artificial stone ; and 

 among discoveries the Australian gold mines, the Cleveland iron- 

 stone, and the American oil-well. 



** The great inventions, those which have not merely improved 

 but revolutionized trade, are, within the last century, the steam- 

 engine, with steam-navigation and railways, textile machinery, 

 electric telegraphs, and steam printing, and we think that the four 

 inventions named at the beginning of this article are those which, 

 among our more recent acquisitions, are best entitled, by their real 

 importance (although this is not fully developed), to the distinction 

 we have given them. 



" There are many fields of discovery which offer real prom- 

 ise of excellent results, and there are, beyond these, a host of 

 glittering possibilities, or what we are willing to accept as possi- 

 bilities, however remote, which hold out the attractions of the 

 grandest rewards which practical genius can ever attain. Who 

 can reflect upon the almost immeasurable forces of solar heat and 

 lunar attraction exercised daily upon our planet, and with visible 

 results, without hoping, and indeed to some extent believing, that 

 human ingenuity will yet find means for penetrating nearer and 

 yet nearer to these tremendous mysteries of nature, and turn them 

 into new channels for the good of man ? With countless millions 

 of tons of hydrogen in the sea and of oxygen in the air, shall we 

 not yet find means to burn the very waters of the globe, and liter- 

 ally set the river on fire ? With millions of tons of carbon on the 

 earth, shall we not yet convert it, by some means, into palatable 

 and wholesome human food? And shall we not yet find cheaper 

 and readier means of converting the vast stores of vegetable fibre, 



