RELATIONS OF SCIENCE TO THE PUBLIC WEAL. 241 



us how certain fungi were used to carry fire from one part of the coun- 

 try to the other. The tinder-box long held its position as a great dis- 

 covery in the arts. The jyyxidicula igniaria of the Romans appears 

 to have been much the same implement, though a little ruder than the 

 flint and steel which Philip the Good put into the collar of the Golden 

 Fleece in 1429 as a representation of high knowledge in the progress 

 of the arts. It continued to prevail till 18o3, when phosphorus- 

 matches were introduced, though I have been amused to find that 

 there are a few venerable ancients in London who still stick to the 

 tinder-box, and for whom a few shops keep a small supply. Phos- 

 phorus was no new discovery, for it had been obtained by an Arabian 

 called Bechel in the eighth century. However, it was forgotten, and 

 was rediscovered by Brandt, who made it out of very stinking mate- 

 rials in 1669. Other discoveries had, however, to be made before it 

 could be used for lucifer-matches. The science of combustion was 

 only developed on the discovery of oxygen a century later. Time had 

 to elapse before chemical analysis showed the kind of bodies which could 

 be added to phosphorus so as to make it ignite readily. So it was not 

 till 1833 that matches became a partial success. Intolerably bad they 

 then were, dangerously inflammable, horribly poisonous to the makers, 

 and injurious to the lungs of the consumers. It required another dis- 

 covery by Schrotter, in 1845, to change poisonous waxy into innocu- 

 ous red -brick phosphorus in order that these defects might be remedied 

 and to give us the safety-match of the present day. Kow, what have 

 these successive discoveries in science done for the nation, in this sin- 

 gle manufacture, by an economy of time ? If before 1833 we had 

 made the same demands for light that we now do, when we daily con- 

 sume eight matches per head of the population, the tinder-box could 

 have supplied the demand under the most favorable conditions by an 

 expenditure of one quarter of an hour. The lucifer-match supplies a 

 light in fifteen seconds on each occasion, or in two minutes for the 

 whole day. Putting these differences into a year, the venerable ancient 

 who still sticks to his tinder-box would require to spend ninety hours 

 yearly in the production of light, while the user of lucifer-matches 

 spends twelve hours, so that the latter has an economy of seventy- 

 eight hours yearly, or about ten working days. Measured by cost of 

 production at one shilling and sixpence daily, the economy of time 

 represented in money to our population is twenty-six millions of 

 pounds annually. This is a curious instance of the manner in which 

 science leads to economy of time and wealth even in a small manufact- 

 ure. In larger industries the economy of time and labor produced 

 by the application of scientific discoveries is beyond all measurement. 

 Thus the discovery of latent heat by Black led to the inventions of 

 "Watt, while that of the mechanical equivalent of heat by Joule has 

 been the basis of the progressive improvements in the steam-engine 

 which enables power to be obtained by a consumption of fuel less 



VOL. XXVIII. — 16 



