476 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the shell of a gourd, we are using a thing which, in the shape we use 

 it, is a human contrivance, and the contrivances which man has de- 

 vised for obtaining water and distributing it have been among the 

 most wonderful and ingenious of any which have occupied the human 

 mind. Bountifully as Nature has provided water and placed it within 

 the reach of man, yet we do in fact get or use but little of it except 

 by the aid of inventions. 



The air surrounds u*s at all times and we can not help using it if 

 we would ; but, if we want it either hotter or colder than we find it, 

 we must resort to some invention to gratify our want. If we want it 

 to blow upon us when it is still, we must set it in motion by some 

 contrivance, and fans among other things have been invented for that 

 purpose. A large amount of human ingenuity has been expended 

 upon devices for moving air when we want it moved, upon fans, 

 blowers, and ventilators. 



How small a part of our food do we take as animals do, in the 

 form provided by Nature, and how very large a share in some form 

 contrived by man ! "We drink infusions of tea or coffee without 

 thinking that the compounds are human inventions. How large a 

 place the milk of the cow has in the food of man, but how little of it 

 could he have but for a multitude of contrivances ! We think of 

 butter as we do of milk, that it is a production of Nature ; and so 

 it is, but its separation from milk is an invention which has been 

 followed by a host of inventions to effect the separation easier or 

 better. 



Sugar is a production of Nature, but little known a few hundred 

 years ago. Separated from the plants in which it is formed, it is an 

 invention of man. The savage who first crushed some kernels of 

 wheat between two stones, and separated the mealy interior from the 

 outer skin, invented flour, and the human mind has not yet ceased to 

 be exercised on the subject of its improvement. 



Probably the earliest inventions of man had reference to the pro- 

 curing and preparing of food, and the ingenuity of man is exercised 

 even now upon it more eagerly than ever before, and the power of 

 man to produce food has been increased during the last fifty years 

 more than it had been for a thousand years before. 



Fifty years ago, a large part of the wheat and other grain raised 

 in this country was cut, a handful at a time, with a sickle, and a man 

 could not, as a rule, reap more than a quarter of an acre a day. An 

 instrument called a cradle was beginning to come into use, and with 

 that a man could reap about two acres. 



Within fifty years inventors have given the world the reaping- 

 machine, with which a man and two horses will cut from fifteen to 

 twenty acres a day. 



Fifty years ago the grain was almost wholly thrashed from the 

 straw by pounding it upon a floor with a flail. If I remember cor- 



