Scienti/ic Societies. 23 



lieat under their caldron; but it was no accident that developed 

 the art of glass-making out of this phenomenon. It may have 

 been an accident that shewed to Callimachus the acanthus twining 

 round a basket which had been placed on its root ; but the 

 Corinthian Capital was the result of artistic genius, and not of 

 chance. It may have been accident which made some aqua regia 

 drop from a broken vial on an extract of cochineal in Cornelius 

 Drebbel's study, but it was no accident which led to his improve- 

 ment of the scarlet dye by discovering that this splendid colour 

 was caused by the fact of the aqua regia having melted the tin 

 round his window-frames. It was by accident that the children 

 of a spectacle-maker in Middleborough, playing with lenses in the 

 shop, iiit on the very principle on which nature has constructed the 

 human eye ; but it was patience not accident which has resulted 

 in the telescope and the microscope. It was by accident that the 

 ancients long ago discoved that amber when rubbed would attract 

 straws and chips; but the science of electricity (which derives its 

 name from amber) is not due to accident but to research ; without 

 such intelligent research, the accidental observation, which ended 

 in metallic lightning-conductors and voltaic piles, and magnetic 

 telegraphs, must have continued as useless as it was among those 

 naked savage copper-coloured children on the banks of the 

 Orinoco, whom Humboldt saw amusing themselves with attracting 

 fibres of cotton and bamboo, by the electricity evolved in rubbing 

 the shining seeds of a plant of the Nigretia. The properties of the 

 magnet had been known so early, that 200 years before Christ, the 

 Chinese Emperor, Tschingwang, gave " magnetic cars" to some 

 ambassadors from Cochin-China, on which were little figures of 

 men whose magnetic arms always pointed southwards, and thus 

 guided them safely over the boundless steppes and deserts of 

 Asia. Yet now, after more than 2000 years, the loadstone re- 

 mains a plaything to the Chinese, and they have to steer their 

 vessels with our compasses. It was accident which first led 

 Hiiyghens to the observation that Iceland spar divided a beam of 

 light so as to cause a double refraction ; but it was no accident 

 which applied the discovery to ascertain " whether the sun's light 

 proceeds from a solid nucleus or from a gaseous covering; and 

 whether comets are self-luminous or reflect borrowed light." 



But if any of these discoveries may seem to have been in any 

 degree due to accidents, not so with the ones which I will now 

 mention. When, in 1815, a clergyman directly appealed to Sir 

 Humphrey Davy — who, from a village lad, the son of a widowed 

 milliner, had raised himself to the position of the first philosopher 

 of his age — to invent some contrivance which should prevent the 

 constant and deplorable accidents arising from the explosion of 



