EDITOR'S TABLE. 



563 



^tlitox's %tibl*. 



THE SCIENTIFIC ADVANCE. 



AS the nineteenth century draws 

 - to its close there is no slacken- 

 ing in that onward march of scien- 

 tific discovery and invention which 

 has been its chief characteristic. Far 

 from it, discovery and invention 

 seem to be proceeding with ever-in- 

 creasing rapidity ; it is as if a foun- 

 tain had been opened which, far 

 from showing signs of exhaustion 

 with lapse of time, gained in vol- 

 ume and force from year to year. 

 Whether a pause will ever come is a 

 question which many would be dis- 

 posed to answer in the negative. It 

 seems impossible that Nature, now 

 that we have discovered the true 

 method of interrogating her, should 

 not go on revealing herself to us 

 with greater and greater fullness. 

 Without speculating, however, too 

 deeply on the future, we may affirm 

 that at present the scientific move- 

 ment is at its maximum of vigor and 

 productiveness. 



It is astonishing to look back and 

 see the strides that have been made 

 in eighty or ninety years. In the 

 beginning of the century there were 

 stationary steam engines, and a few 

 crude attempts were being made in 

 the direction of steam navigation; 

 but as yet the locomotive was a 

 thing unthought of. To-day marine 

 navigation has taken the form we 

 see in the giant vessels that ply be- 

 tween this country and Europe and 

 the first-class battle ships of the 

 world's great navies, with their triple- 

 expansion engines, their wonderfully 

 perfected boilers, their twin screws, 

 and their infinitely multiplied ap- 

 pliances for safety and efficiency. 



At the beginning of the century 

 electricity was a curious study, giv- 



ing only slight promise of any use- 

 ful practical applications. It had not 

 advanced beyond the frictional ma- 

 chine, the Ley den jar, and the vol- 

 taic pile. The telegraph was as yet 

 undreamed of, and the telephone and 

 the dynamo utterly unimaginable de- 

 velopments. Had any one dared to 

 conceive that signals could be made 

 to pass in a second of time between 

 Europe and America he would have 

 been considered a fit candidate for 

 Bedlam ; and certainly not less insane 

 would have been considered the no- 

 tion that a human voice could by 

 any device make itself distinctly au- 

 dible at a distance of five hundred 

 or even a thousand miles. To-day 

 these things are commonplaces, and 

 men are beginning to grudge the 

 trouble of putting up wires for the 

 conveyance of the electric current, 

 great authorities in the scientific 

 world having told them that theo- 

 retically it ought to be possible to 

 do without such crude appliances. 

 What was a curious toy in the be- 

 ginning of the century is the jack- 

 of -all- work at its close, or, in other 

 words, the most widely available 

 form of force in the modern world. 

 What steam can not do, owing to the 

 difficulty, on the one hand, of gen- 

 erating it locally, and, on the other, 

 of conveying it to any great dis- 

 tance, electricity, which is capable 

 of infinite subdivision and of distri- 

 bution from a relatively distant cen- 

 ter, stands ready to undertake. 



We have only to look around us 

 to see the innumerable wonders that 

 science in its practical applications 

 has wrought, and to be impressed 

 by the beneficence of its operations. 

 The electric light in our streets and 

 the familiar trolley car constitute ad- 



