THE UTILITY OF SCIENCE 233 



zene and its derivatives, of the electro-chemical 

 industry, of the improvement of steel-making, 

 of the synthetic production of substances like 

 indigo which were formerly procurable only as 

 natural products, and of the utilization of the 

 nitrogen of the air in the manufacture of ferti- 

 lizers. Among the many practical benefits 

 resulting from the development of physics, we 

 naturally think first of some of the more recent 

 the telegraph, the telephone, wireless telegraphy, 

 electric motors, and flying machines. From the 

 sciences of the earth man has profited enormously 

 for they have led him to stores of coal and iron 

 and other buried treasures. From oceanography 

 already there are conclusions of importance in con- 

 nection with fisheries, and meteorology, another 

 very young science, has already to be thanked for 

 much saving of life and wealth through its pro- 

 phetic weather reports. 



On the biological side we may mention as 

 diverse illustrations, the applications of bacte- 

 riology in surgery, hygiene, agriculture, and the 

 preservation or improvement of food; the appli- 

 cation of "protozoology" to the study of such 

 diseases as pebrine in silkworms and sleeping- 

 sickness in man; the influence on medicine of the 

 physiological discovery of internal secretions like 

 those of the thyroid gland and the suprarenals; 

 the study of the whole economy of the sea in 



