SCIENTIFIC PROBLEMS OF THE FUTUKE.i 



By Lieut. CoL H. Elsdale. 



An able writer, Mr. Pearson, has recently observed in Lis work, 

 National Progress and National Character, that few or no farther lead- 

 ing discoveries or new departures in physical or mechanical science are 

 to be expected; that future generations have now only to fill in the 

 details and to supplement what has already been done. 



I can not agree with him. We must not thus set limits to the invent- 

 iveness of mankind. The well-known epithet nEpi^padr]^ av))p will 

 justify itself in the future as in the past. Nor can we set arbitrary 

 bounds to the inexhaustible secrets of nature, and to the importance of 

 the new arrangements and fresh combinations which are open to further 

 research into them. An ever larger and larger number of fertile brains 

 are continually at work in discovery and invention, as is clearly shown 

 by the most cursory study of the annual publications of any of the 

 various State patent offices. And these fresh brains start from an ever- 

 wideniug vantage ground of accumulated research and proved expe- 

 rience. The result must surely be that important inventions and new 

 discoveries will crowd thicker upon the world in the twentieth than in 

 the nineteenth century. I think that we have now looming before us 

 in the immediate future, darkly no doubt, but still very distinctly, 

 leading discoveries in science which will constitute new departures 

 fully as large as, if not larger than, those which have resulted from, 

 let us say, the introduction of railways or telegraphs in the past. Their 

 number may possibly be legion. I j)ropose here to confine myself to the 

 consideration of four leading problems, some, if not all, of which seem 

 practically certain of solution in the next generation, if not in our own. 

 And their solution will involve rcvsults of enormous and almost incal- 

 culable importance to the future of mankind. 



The conquest of the air is the first of them. Aerial navigation has 

 been the dream of enterprising and inventive men in all the ages, and 

 that dream is now drawing near to its realization. 



'From The Contemponiry Review, March, 1894; by permission of the Leonard 

 Scott Publication Company, New Yorli. 



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