1864. | Introduction. 19 
more immediately affect the progress of civilization; and in order to 
enable us to do so, we shall be compelled for the present to pass over 
many questions of interest in chemical and physical science.* 
Amongst these are the discoveries of new metals, such as thallium, 
indium, &c., by spectrum analysis ; researches in organic and inorganic 
chemistry by eminent English and foreign experimentalists, and the 
important and interesting experiments upon the nature of heat, by our 
own physicist, Professor Tyndall, as well as all those medical and 
chirurgical discoveries which have added to the duration of human 
life or alleviated physical pain ; and we shall now refer cursorily to 
a few features in the progress of Mechanical Science. 
It must often appear marvellous to the uninitiated, that the hand 
of man is able to accomplish works in civil or military engineering, 
in comparison with which the labours of Vulcan appear puerile and 
insignificant. But there is one instrument alone, which, since the 
introduction of steam, has afforded almost unlimited facilities for the 
employment and fabrication of the coarser metals; we refer to the 
steam hammer. When this tool was first introduced, about twenty or 
twenty-five years since, the weight of the hammer was about five 
hundredweight, whilst that of the instruments now employed in the 
forging of guns, large shafts, and similar descriptions of work, in some 
cases attains to forty tons. And it is even stated that there is now 
one in course of construction at Sheffield, intended for the forging of 
armour-plates, of nearly one hundred tons. The rapid development 
of this almost superhuman power, then, is alone able to account for 
the tremendous results obtained from modern implements of warfare, 
and for the obstinacy with which these are resisted by modern armour. 
But it is not only in its gigantic features that mechanical science 
is making such rapid strides. The various woods which served the 
purposes of our forefathers are, indeed, still largely employed, but 
they are no longer fashioned by the hand of man. Steam and 
machinery now perform every kind of work with greater accuracy 
and economy than did formerly muscle and bone, and we have our 
mechanism for sawing, planing, grooving, tongucing, carving, and 
indeed for every similar operation. 
And through the observations and experiments of men, eminent 
in physical science, we may calculate upon a greatly increased effi- 
ciency of the motive power and its application to almost every kind of 
manufacturing industry. 
Steam, to which in the eyes of most of our readers nothing 
* A full resumé of the progress of these branches of science will, however, be 
found in our ‘ Chronicles.’ 
o 2 
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