RETROSPECT AND FORECAST 203 



innovations of that momentous epoch. From the 

 moral and intellectual stimulus thus produced have 

 proceeded the triumphs of practical science in mechani- 

 cal invention, in chemical discovery, in the utilisation 

 of steam and electricity, and in the progress of sanita- 

 tion and therapeutic skill. The means and factors 

 of progress evolved by scientific inventions and dis- 

 coveries have enabled man to increase and multiply 

 his species, to cheapen the products of his industries, 

 weaving, chemical and metallurgic, to supply with 

 them the most distant marts, and to receive from 

 them in turn whatever ministers to his needs or to 

 the gratification of his tastes, in a fraction of the 

 time that was required for their transit half a century 

 ago, and to arrange commercial transactions within 

 the space of a few minutes across thousands of miles 

 of sea and land. 



Accompanying this extraordinary energising of the 

 race, there has been in the nineteenth century a 

 prodigious development of the food resources of the 

 soil, that has permitted the population of the world 

 to increase by at least 50 per cent., and has caused 

 even this increase to be attended with an ampler 

 supply of food and a greater material comfort for 

 the individual human being. 



The vast increase that has taken place in so brief 

 a space of time in the earth's production of food, 

 and in the numbers of the human species, is evidence 

 that up till a recent period a very large portion of 

 the cultivable surface of the globe was insufficiently 



