276 • TKANSACTIONS OF THE 



mitted to the insane asylum because he predicted that a railroad 

 would be built from the Atlantic to the Pacific. We may imagine 

 that there is nothing left to be done, but as Emerson said, "Nothing 

 has been done by men that cannot be better done." I have no doubt 

 that there are powers in nature more swift than the silent feet of 

 electricity which now speed along those webs of iron which are 

 woven like a network of nerves over all lands and under all seas. 

 Some power greater than the steam-engine will yet be discovered 

 which will carry products from producer to consumer in the twink- 

 ling of an eye, and bring the families of man together in such close 

 neighborhood and brotherhood as to make possible "' that parliament 

 of nations, that federation of the world," of which Tennyson prophe- 

 sied. Wait until man can handle steam not only as he can to-day, 

 but in its superheated condition, in which it possesses the tremen- 

 dous force of dynamite itself. The time will come, I suppose, when 

 the Gatling and Parrott guns and the Winchester rifles of to-day, 

 supplanted by more perfect arms, will retire to rest and rust beside 

 the flint-lock muskets and the crossbows of antiquity. Some marvel 

 of mechanism will yet supplant the sewing-machine, and clothe our 

 descendants with more than the glory of Solomon, and with scarely 

 more labor than that put forth by the lilies of the fleld, which toil 

 not, neither do they spin. The steamship, it may be, will yet rot at 

 the dock, set aside by airships, those ''argosies with magic sails, 

 pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales," and 

 the locomotive be cast aside with the creaking and toiling prairie 

 schooner steered by the Argonaut of '49 across the wind-swept desert, 

 cast aside to make room for soine pneumatic or electric railway. 



Take for example the solar energy which,, by evaporation, draws 

 up three thousand million tons of water three and one half miles 

 every minute, expending a force equal to two thousand seven hundred 

 and lif ty-seven million horse-power. Ericsson's solar engine condenses 

 the solar rays on a space ten feet square, and enough force is gener- 

 ated by them to run an engine of eight and one half horse-power ten 

 hours a day. Enough solar energy is being wasted all abound us to 

 do all the work of the world, and man will yet hitch his wagon to 

 the sun and give it harder work to do than bleaching linen and 

 painting pictures with its swift pencil of light for him. Wait till 

 some cheap and easy method of decomposing water is invented. You 

 know water is composed of about eight parts of oxygen, a supporter 

 of combustion, and one part of hydrygen, a highly inflammable gas. 

 By electrolysis the chemist decomposes water into these two gases. 

 Let the scientist who "knows enough to set the river afire" discover 

 some cheaper method than electrolysis, and lo ! the ocean steamer 

 will pump her fuel from the sea she rides, and while water converted 

 into steam shall drive our railway engines, water transformed into 

 fuel will feed their furnaces. Some fanciful genius recently pre- 

 dicted that man would yet utilize the force that produces earthquakes 

 for blasting purposes. The same genius predicted that some cute 

 Yankee would utilize the fifty-six million horse-power wasted by 

 the falling torrent of Niagara, while a stock company will make blast 

 furnaces of Vesuvius, Mauna Loa, and Cotapaxi, and another com- 

 pany will issue stock for the enterprise of using the Aurora Borealis 

 to light the cities of St. Petersburg, Stockholm, and London. You 

 know it is the Gulf Stream that prevents England having the climate 

 of Labrador. M^ho knows but that if war ever again breaks out 



