12 SCIENCE AND LIFE 



throughout those bygone wastes of geological time. 

 It is kindled, its store of energy bursts again into 

 flame, and a civilisation, such as the world has never 

 known, springs into being with the sunlight of a 

 hundred million years ago augmenting its own. 



The source of energy by which the modern world 

 lives so profligately is no steady or perennial stream, 

 such as that out of which our forefathers evolved 

 their greatness. It is a stagnant pond, trapped from 

 the main cosmical flow by a fortunate sequence of 

 earth-movements, being drained at an ever-increasing 

 rate and in an ever-increasing number of ways. 

 "You have given me a store of energy," the modern 

 Archimedes might say, "and steel wherewith to 

 apply it, and lo ! I have moved the world." 



WATER POWER. 



In justice to science, however, it must be said that 

 not all its conquests are effected by the expenditure 

 of the capital sum of energy ; for there is a secondary, 

 but considerable, source of energy available to the 

 modern world, representing the better utilisation of 

 the fixed income. Water power, or white fuel, as it 

 is picturesquely called abroad, is a small part of the 

 perennial supply of solar energy, conserved by purely 

 physical processes, without the elaborate intervention 

 of life at all, and the utilisation of which on every 

 count, except the aesthetic, is a source of pure gain to 

 the community. Energy itself is indestructible, and 

 in itself is only valuable in its conversion from what 

 may be called higher to lower forms. The natural 

 transformations occur without loss of the absolute 

 amount of energy. Rather what is lost is merely 

 opportunity to direct those transformations to useful 

 ends. 



In nature this opportunity passes as a rule 



