322 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Oct. 



of the laws of nature which has added to the working strength of a 

 thousand millions of men the mightier power of steam (a), ex- 

 tracted from the buried ruins of primeval forests, their treasured 

 elements of heat and light and color, and brought under the 

 control of the human finger, and converted into a messenger of 

 man's gentlest thoughts, the dangerous mystery of the light- 

 ning (6) ? 



How many questions have we asked — not always in vain — re- 

 o-ardino- the constitution of the earth, its history as a planet, its 

 place in creation ; now probing with sharpened eyes the peopled 

 space around — peopled with a thousand times ten thousand stars ; 

 now floating above the clouds in colder and clearer air ; now tra- 

 versing the polar ice — the desert sand — the virgin forest — the un- 

 conquered mountain ; now sounding the depths of the ocean, or 

 divine into the dark places of the earth. Everywhere curiosity, every- 

 where discovery, everywhere enjoyment, everywhere some useful 

 and therefore some worthy result. Life in every form, of every 

 o-rade, in every stage ; man in every clime and under all conditions : 

 the life that now surrounds us, and that which has passed away ; — 

 these subjects of high contemplation have been examined often, if 

 not always, in the spirit of that philosophy which is slowly raising^ 

 on abroad security of observed facts, sure inductions, and repeated 

 experiments, the steady columns of the temple of physical truth. 



Few of the great branches of the study of nature on which 

 modern philosophy is intent were left unconsidered in the schools 

 of Athens ■ hardly one of them was or indeed could be made the 

 subject of accurate experiment. The precious instruments of 

 exact research — the measures of time, and space, and force, and 

 motion — are of very modern date. If, instead of the few lenses 



(a) The quantity of coal dug in Great Britain, in the year 1864, ap- 

 pears by the returns of Mr. R. Hunt to have been 92,787,873 tons. This 

 would yield, if employed in steam-engines of good construction, an 

 amount of available force about equal to^that of the whole human race. 

 But in the combustion of coal not less than ten times this amount of force is 

 actually set free — nine-tenths being at present unavailable, according 

 to the statement of Sir. William Armstrong, in his address to the meet- 

 ing at Newcastle, in 1863. 



(6) The definite magnetic effect of an electrical current, was the dis- 

 covery of Oersted in 1819 : Cooke and Wheatstone's patent for an Electric 

 Telegraph is dated in 1837 ; the first message across the Atlantic was 

 delivered in 1858. Tantse molis erat. 



