STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 55 



about US for more than half a century after all this was known of 

 it, until the practical genius of Morse led him to the effort to 

 appropriate it to utilitarian purposes. He doubtless reasoned, 

 that if the positive medium would exercise a force to perforate a 

 card, by means of a properly contrived machine, it could be made 

 to throw out a metalic point, and that point would make a dot; 

 and if thrown upon a moving surface, and held there, the dot 

 would become a dash, and with the dot and the dash, longer or 

 shorter, an alphabet could be formed. That machine and that 

 alphabet he contriv^ed, and the telegraph was completed. Frank- 

 lin took the step in the great work : he showed the world that 

 this monster power could be controlled — could he led at will. The 

 world admired his genius, but profited little by it, except that 

 he taught to lead the lightning from the cloud to the earth on 

 the outside of the edifice instead of the inside. But when the 

 practical genius of Morse put a pen upon the end of Franklin's 

 wire, and made it the instantaneous messenger of thought, irre- 

 spective of distance, he brought all Christendom upon its feet, and 

 a new era in the world's history was commenced. 



Franklin gained immortality by taking the first step; Morse 

 gained a better immortality when he took the work where Frank- 

 lin left it, and applied it to the benefit of hfs race. 



Watt placed his name upon record as a public benefactor when 

 he improved the steam engine and made it an effective power; 

 but Fulton made himself immortal, and gave also celebrity to 

 Watt, when he applied the steam engine to purposes of naviga- 

 tion and produced a revolution in the carrying trade and travel 

 of the civilized world. 



The geologist who traces a new development in a protozoic 

 layer, makes a contribution to science; but the chemist and agri- 

 culturist wlio follow him and discover a fertilizing element in 

 the crumbling fossil of the trilobite found in the rock, and apply 

 that fertility to the growth of the cereal plant, make a contribu- 

 tion to the means of human life. 



When, from the fossil of tlie saurian, the geologist defined the 

 age of the rock where dry land first appeared, he made a valua- 

 ble achievment for science; and the chemist also made an achicv- 

 ment when he traced the fertilizing? car])onate in that fossil; but 

 the agriculturist made tlie final and not the least achievment for 



