.svA' //'//./././.I/ .sy/-;.i//-:.v.v, y--./ v '.\. 235 



;iml lit; thought it a great pity that the Post Office authorities at 

 present discourage the employment of young ladies in the telegraph 

 service. One would almost think from the number of students in 

 fit vtricity and magnetism that the art of attraction was peculiarly 

 there. He did not think this was so, but there was no getting 

 away from the fact that the telegraphic art was a sphere in which 

 then- \v;is a great field for the exercise of ability. 



We were now, it might be thought, at the end of discovery ; 

 \\v had steam engines and gas lighting and railways, the electric 

 telegraph, and everything except flying. He did not believe in 

 our ability to fly, but they need never fear that they were coming 

 to the end of discovery and invention. 



There were new branches of science coming very near to the 

 surface at this moment, one of which, personally, he took a great 

 deal of interest in, and which was attracting a good deal of 

 attention, and that was lighting by electricity. He believed that 

 electricity was destined not only to become the most powerful 

 lumiuant that could come into competition with gas without doing 

 away with the necessity for it, but electricity was also destined to 

 perform other very important functions for us. By electricity we 

 could convey motive power from one place to another, with the 

 least amount of loss, and the greatest amount of comfort, and so 

 fully convinced was he of the applicability of electricity for that 

 purpose that three years ago, when president of the Iron and Steel 

 Institute, in his address to the members, he gave a calculation of 

 the power which was lost through great waterfalls not being 

 utilised. 



Shortly before that time he had stood under the falls of 

 Niagara, and after his first feelings of astonishment and wonder 

 at the greatness of the falls, he went into a calculation as to the 

 power the fall of water there really represented. He was astonished 

 to find that the force lost at this one place was equal to the force 

 of all the coal raised throughout the world. That was to say that 

 if the whole of the coal raised annually throughout the world 

 260 million tons was brought to the place and consumed in 

 boilers the engines which all the boilers would work would be just 

 about sufficient to raise the water up again. They would see that 

 a force was here lost that was equal to all the energy we laboriously 

 took from the mines of this and other countries, and it showed 



