36 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



language had undergone. History and preserved writings show that such 

 common mother-race and language have existed in the Roman people and 

 the Latin tongue. But Latin, like the equally " dead " language Greek, with 

 Sanscrit, Lithuanian, Zend, and the Gothic, Sclavonic, and Celtic tongues, 

 can be similarly shown to be modifications of one antecedent common lan- 

 guage ; whence is to be inferred an antecedent race of men, and a lapse of 

 time sufficient for their migration over a tract extending from Iceland in the 

 north-west to India in the south-east, and for all the above named modi- 

 fications to have been established in the common mother " Arian " tongue. 



Agriculture has of late years made unusual progress, and much of that 

 progress is due to the application of scientific principles; chiefly of those 

 supplied by Chemistry; in a less degree of Zoology and Physiology. Ge- 

 ology now teaches the precise nature and relations of soils : a knowledge of 

 great practical importance in guiding the drainer of land, in the modifica- 

 tions of his general rules of practice. Palaeontology has brought to light un- 

 expected sources of valuable manures, in phosphatic relics of ancient animal 

 life, accumulated in astounding masses in certain localities of England. But 

 quantities of azotic, ammoniacal, and phosphatic matters are still suffered 

 to run to waste; and, as if to bring the wastefulness more home to the con- 

 viction, those products, so valuable when rightly administered, become a 

 source of annoyance, unremunerative outlay and disease, when, as at present 

 in most towns, imperfectly and irrationally disposed of. 



In the operations of Nature, there is generally a succession of processes 

 coordinated for a given result; a peach is not directly developed as such 

 from its elements ; the seed would, a priori, give no idea of the tree, nor the 

 tree of the flower, nor the fertilized germ of that flower of the pulpy fruit 

 in which the seed was buried. It is eminently characteristic of the Creative 

 Wisdom, this far-seeing and prevision of an ultimate result, through the 

 successive operations of a coordinate series of seemingly very different con- 

 ditions. The further a man discerns, in a series of conditions, their co- 

 ordination to produce a given result, the nearer does his wisdom approach 

 though the distance be still immeasurable to the Divine wisdom. One 

 philanthropist builds a fever hospital, another drains a town. One crime- 

 preventer trains the boy, another hangs the man. One statesman would 

 raise money by augmenting a duty, or by a direct tax, and finds the revenue 

 not increased in the expected ratio. Another diminishes a tax, or abolishes 

 a duty, and through foreseen consequences the revenue is improved. Water 

 is the cheapest and most efficient transporter of excreta ; but it should be 

 remembered that the application of the water-supply as a transporting power 

 is to be limited to all that comes from the interior of the abodes; this alone 

 can be practically and successfully applied to agriculture. Whatever flows 

 from the outside of houses, together with the general rainfall of the town 

 area, should go to the nearest river by channels wholly distinct from the 

 hydraulic excretory system. Agriculture, let me repeat, has made, and is 

 making, great and encouraging progress ; but much yet remains to be done. 

 Were agriculture adequately advanced, the great problem of the London 

 sewage would be speedily solved. Can it be supposed, if the rural districts 

 about the metropolis were in a condition to avail themselves of a daily sup- 

 ply of the pipe-water not more than equivalent to that which a heavy shower 

 of rain throws down on 2,000 acres of land, but a supply charged with thirty 

 tons of nitrogenous ammoniacal principles, that such supply would not be 

 forthcoming, and made capable of being distributed ^hen called for within 



