MOTIVE POWER OF HEAT. 41 



the most distant nations. It tends to unite the 

 nations of the earth as inhahitants of one country. 

 In fact, to lessen the time, the fatigues, the uncer- 

 tainties, and the dangers of travel is not this the 

 same as greatly to shorten distances?* 



The discovery of the steam-engine owed its birth, 

 like most human inventions, to rude attempts 

 which have been attributed to different persons, 

 while the real author is not certainly known. It 

 is, however, less in the first attempts that the prin- 

 cipal discovery consists, than in the successive im- 

 provements which have brought steam-engines to 

 the condition in which we find them to-day. There 

 is almost as great a distance between the first appa- 

 ratus in which the expansive force of steam was 

 displayed and the existing machine, as between the 

 first raft that man ever made and the modern vessel. 



If the honor of a discovery belongs to the nation 

 in which it has acquired its growth and all its 

 developments, this honor cannot be here refused 



* We say, to lessen the dangers of journeys. In fact, 

 although the use of the steam-engine on ships is attended 

 by some danger which has been greatly exaggerated, this 

 is more than compensated by the power of following al- 

 ways an appointed and well-known route, of resisting the 

 force of the winds which would drive the ship towards 

 the shore, the shoals, or the rocks. 



