THE APOTHEOSIS OF STEAM. 435 



ing-machine. The steam-plough has not yet been introduced exten- 

 sively, but it will doubtless make another revolution. The progress 

 made in the drainage of land by pipes, in the drying of fruits and 

 vegetables by hot air, and the canning of fruits and meats, all are im- 

 portant aids to agricultural industry. The breeds of farm-animals 

 have been greatly improved. The Ayrshire, the Durham, the Jersey, 

 and the Devon, the Cotswold, the Southdown and the Cheviot, the 

 Chester and the Berkshire, the Clydesdale and the American trotter, 

 have been either started, or for the first time introduced into extensive 

 use, in the steam age. 



The miner has adopted dynamite and other explosives stronger 

 and safer to handle than the charcoal-powder, and can, at the same 

 time, hold and strike the small drill, whereas the large drill needed 

 for the weaker powder required one man to hold the drill while an- 

 other was striking. Steam not only hoists the ore and pumps the 

 water, but sometimes drills the rock. The method of stoping toward 

 the shaft has been introduced. More important still is the general 

 education of the superintendents in engineering and chemistry. The 

 processes of separating gold and silver from the earthy and rocky mat- 

 ter which hold them in a state of nature are new in their principal 

 features. 



All the prominent mechanical occupations have felt the influences 

 of our progressive time, and many have been added to the list. 

 Nearly every labor-saving machine has called a new trade into ex- 

 istence. The builders of stationary engines, of locomotives and of rail- 

 way-cars, the boiler-maker, the steam, the railway, and the gas en- 

 gineers, the gas-fitter, and the manufacturer of chemicals, are a few 

 out of many. Planing and moulding machines, and circular and band 

 saws, wire ropes and iron bridges, " balloon " house-frames, fastened 

 together with nails, and without the old style of mortices and tenons, 

 and machines to make cut-nails and wood screws, have had much in- 

 fluence in mechanical business. If steel pens had not come into use 

 as a substitute for quills, the supply of which would have been entire- 

 ly inadequate to the scribbling demands of the present day, education 

 might have felt a check. The steam-press, the turbine-wheel, the 

 type-casting machine, lamp-chimneys which secure better light with 

 less smoke, kerosene-lamps, cleanly stearine-candles instead of the 

 dirty tallow, are all to be credited to the steam age. 



The railroads and the steamboats have covered the land, the 

 rivers, and the lakes of Europe and North America with the beneficent 

 network of their routes, and have given a new life to commerce. The 

 exports of Great Britain in 1770 amounted to $65,000,000, and in 1870 

 to 81,220,000,000. In the same period the measurement of the ship- 

 ping owned in that country increased from 550,000 to 7,100,000 tons, 

 and that of the shipping entered in a year from 890,000 to 18,000,000 

 tons. The amount insured rose from $850,000,000 to $0,800,000,000. 



