404 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of electricity direct from coal; papers on the nebular theory, more 

 nebulous than any nebula yet discovered? AVhen we read a broad 

 sheet in the morning paper setting forth a glowing scheme to manu- 

 facture power out of nothing, to what oracle can we repair to ascer- 

 tain the truth? It is true that common sense might lead the 

 reader to reflect that when he is told that the shares can npw be 

 obtained for five dollars, but in a short time they will be advanced 

 to ten dollars, and now is the time to invest, that such good things 

 are quickly taken up without the necessity of advertising. When 

 the morning mail brings a prospectus of a company formed to make 

 diamonds by electricity, a company with ten million dollars capital 

 (why not one hundred millions?), to whom should one go to allay 

 the fever of sudden gain? While men and women will carefully 

 consider which line of steamships to Europe is the best equipped 

 with engines, the efficiency of which depends upon the laws that 

 prove the impossibility of perpetual motion, they enter at the 

 same time upon schemes to obtain power without the consumption 

 of work. 



We are indeed confronted with the curious fact that even so- 

 called intelligent people can be led to believe that what we have 

 learned in regard to the working of Nature may be thrown aside, 

 and that some new and unrelated laws may rule supreme. Thus 

 we have what is called Christian Science, one of the intuitional 

 sciences which may be said to add a new peril to matrimony. We 

 find cultivated men believing that a government can make money 

 by pronouncing silver equal to gold. Thus there are those who 

 fondle their delusions and those who bank upon credulity. Edu- 

 cation seems to be ineffectual with some temperaments; on the 

 whole, however, it has a saving grace, and there are undoubtedly 

 a number in the community who would welcome a source of scien- 

 tific authority which might answer for them just as the Times does 

 in political and economic questions to an Englishman. The Ameri- 

 can has especial reason to fear scientific bubbles, for our patent 

 laws make it comparatively easy for promoters to make a great 

 show of vested rights. One method is to build an imposing plant, 

 with powerful dynamos and vrith a multiplicity of electrical devices, 

 and to capitalize for an enormous sum an expensive plant in sight 

 with millions in patents of very little value. The proposed in- 

 vestor is taken to see the great plant; its magnitude appeals to his 

 reverence for size, and his pocketbook is soon at the service of the 

 promoter. Another method is to select some scheme which is on 

 the borderland between physics and chemistry, such as the elec- 

 trolytic method of obtaining gold from salt water. There is a 

 minute quantity of gold in salt water, and the chemist, thinking 



