MECHANICS AND USEFUL ARTS. o7 



a radius of one hundred miles ? To send ships for foreign ammoniacal or 

 phosphatic excreta to the coast of Peru, and to pollute by the waste of sim- 

 ilar home products the noble river bisecting the metropolis, are flagrant 

 signs of the desert and uncultivated state of a field where science and prac- 

 tice have still to cooperate for the public benefit. 



Some of our sciences are deeply concerned in one progressive step the 

 uniformity of standard in measure and weight throughout the civilized 

 world ; in urging on which step, energetic and unwearied efforts are now be- 

 ing made by a committee of our fellow-laborers of the Royal Society of Arts, 

 amongst whom the name of the prime promoter of this and kindred reforms, 

 Mr. James Yates, deserves special and honorable mention. Chemistry is 

 more concerned in the uniform expression of the results of her delicate bal- 

 ances amongst her cultivators of different countries ; Natural History is no 

 less interested in the use, by all observers, of one and the same scale for 

 measuring, and of one set 01 terms for expressing the superficial dimensions 

 of her subjects. 



But not by words only would, or does, science make return to govern- 

 ments fostering and aiding her endeavors for the public weal. Every prac- 

 tical application of her discoveries tends to the same end as that which the 

 enlightened statesman has in view. The steam-engine in its manifold ap- 

 plications, the crime-decreasing gas-lamp, the lightning conductor, the elec- 

 tric telegraph, the law of storms, and rules for the mariner's guidance in 

 them, the power of rendering surgical operations painless, the measures for 

 preserving public health, and for preventing or mitigating epidemics, such 

 are among the more important practical results of pure scientific research 

 with which mankind have been blessed and States enriched. They are evi- 

 dence unmistakable of the close affinity between the aims and tendencies 

 of science and those of true State policy. In proportion to the activity, pro- 

 ductivity, and prosperity of a community is its power of responding to the 

 calls of the Finance Minister. By a far-seeing one, the man of science will 

 be regarded with a favorable eye, not less for the unlooked-for streams of 

 wealth that have already flowed, but for those that may in future arise, out 

 of the applications of the abstract truths to the discovery of which he devotes 

 himself. This may, indeed, demand some measure of faith on the part of 

 the practical statesman. For who that watched the philosophic Black ex- 

 perimenting on the abstract nature of Caloric could have foreseen that his 

 discovery of latent heat would be the stand-point of Watt's invention of a 

 practically operative steam-engine! How little could the observer of Oer- 

 sted's subtle arrangements for converting electric into magnetic force have 

 dreamt of the application of such discovery to the rapid interchange of ideas 

 now daily practised between individuals in distant cities, countries, and con- 

 tinents ! Some medical contemporaries of John Hunter, when they saw 

 him, as they thought, wasting as much time in studying the growth of a 

 deer's horn as they would have bestowed upon the symptoms of their best 

 patient, compassionated, it is said, the singularity of his pursuits. But, by 

 the insight so gained into the rapid enlargement of arteries, Hunter learned 

 a property of those vessels which emboldened him to experiment on a man 

 with aneurism, and so to introduce a new operation which has rescued from 

 a lingering and painful death thousands of his fellow-creatures. Our great 

 inductive physiologist, in his dissections and experiments on the lower ani- 

 mals, was " taking light what may be wrought upon the body of man." 

 The production of Chloroform, is amongst the more subtle experimental results 



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