May i8, 1893] 



NA TURE 



65 



{C. gracilis, Forbes), and the limb bones of three species, 

 belonging to a new genus Palaocasuarius (Forbes), of the 

 Dinornithidtz^ 



Dr. D. Sharp, F.R.S. exhibited some ants and their sound 

 producing organs. The sound-producing organs of ants consist 

 of very fine parallel lines engraved on a portion of the outer sur- 

 face of the chitinous skeleton and of a scraper or very fine 

 edge. Great delicacy of movement may be given to the latter 

 instrument by means of a ball-and-socket joint. 



Sections showing the microscopic structure of certain fossil 

 cryptogamic plants from the coal-measures, exhibited by Prof. 

 W. C. Williamson, F.R.S., and Dr. D. H. Scott; white 

 corpuscles of the blood and lymph under the microscope, ex- 

 hibited by Mr. W. B. Hardy and Dr. A. A. Kanthack ; maps 

 and photographs illustrating the Sandgate Landslip, exhibited 

 by Mr. W. Topley, F.R.S., and Mr. K. Kerr, F.G.S. 



Mr. Edward Matthey F. C.S. exhibited form in which 

 antimony separates from bismuth at a temperature of 3SO°C. 

 The specimens are those of the film as removed from the surface 

 of the melted antimonial bismuth. They consist of antimony 

 oxide, containing about ten per cent, of bismuth. 



Two compact voltaic batteries of zinc and platinum, were 

 shown by Dr. G. Gore, F.R.S. 



Major P. A. MacMahon, F.R.S., exhibited peramutational 

 tesselations. A new method of obtaining designs for tesselated 

 pavements, based upon the property possessed by the twenty- 

 four different isosceles right-angled triangles derived by per- 

 muting four designs in all possible ways upon the sides. 



Mr. E. Wethered exhibited photo-micrographic lantern 

 slides, illustrating the micro-organisms in limestone rocks. 

 The slides especially illustrate the remarkable structure known 

 as Girvanella. 



Lord . Armstrong, C.B. , F.R.S., exhibited experiments to show 

 the nature of the electric discharge in air and water. The 

 experiments will all be exhibited in action on the screen of the 

 electric lantern, and will include the transfer of a cotton string 

 from one vessel to another by means of a current of water 

 flowing within another under the influence of electricity. Various 

 dust figures will also be formed and similarly shown, displaying 

 (he nature and effects of the electric discharge in air. 



Preparations and photographs demonstrating the .action of 

 solar and electric light on the spores of bacteria and fungi, ex- 

 hibited by Prof. H. Marshall Ward, F.R.S. 



THE 



O' 



INTERDEPENDENCE OF ABSTRACT 

 SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING. 



VN Thursday evening, May 4, the first "James Forrest " 

 Lecture was delivered at the Institution of Civil Engineers, 

 by Dr. William Anderson, F.R.S. The subject was "the 

 interdependence of abstract science and engineering." After 

 briefly explaining the origin of the lecture, Dr. Anderson pro- 

 ceeded ; — The theme which has been prescribed is "The Inter- 

 dependence of Abstract Science and Engineering," and I imagine 

 that the subject has been chosen because of an uneasy feeling, 

 which possesses many thoughtful men, that this country is not 

 keeping pace with its neighbours in engineering progress, and 

 that we shall, in the future, have to pay more attention to abstract 

 science and its application to practice, than we have been, so far, 

 in the habit of doing. 



With rare exceptions, in this country, has there been even a 

 slender amount of theoretical knowledge imparted to various 

 grades of employment ; it is only during the last few years that 

 Science Colleges and technical education in schools and People's 

 Palaces, are beginning to bring our operatives up to the level of 

 our foreign friends, but, unfortunately, too late to retain that pre- 

 eminence which we at one time could claim, and, I fear, 

 placed too much confidence in ; and moreover, a new danger 

 has arisen in the circumstance that popular scientific education 

 has taken a one-sided direction, that of mechanical and technical 

 knowledge alone, so that, though the operative approaches his 

 work with increased intelligence, he remains unfit to reason out 

 the great economic problems on which his own welfare and that 

 of the nation depend. 



It is a matter of extreme surprise to me that so little attention 

 is paid to the science of Political Economy, that not only the 

 mass of the people, in whose hands the voting power now lies, 

 but even, in a great measure, the representatives whom they 

 «lect, have no systematic training in, and are grossly ignorant of, 



NO. 1229, VOL. 48] 



the principles which lie at the root of national prosperity. The 

 further misfortune follows that politicians of the highest position 

 do not scruple to trade on this ignorance, or pursue a course 

 which, in its consequences, is as bad — being ignorant themselves 

 they strive to lead the ignorant, and set the operative against his 

 employer and against society in general. The cheapness of news- 

 papers, their wide diffusion, and their blind, not to say reckless 

 advocacy of popular fallacies acting on the ignorance, prejudices, 

 and discomfort, if not suffering, of the operative classes, are giving 

 enormous power to trade organisations, whose avowed object it 

 is to improve the earnings and social standing of the operative at 

 the expense of, or at any rate without regard to, the interests 

 of every other class in the community, and this is to be accom- 

 plished not by encouraging education, not by advocating thrift 

 and temperance, not by urging the workman 10 improve his 

 mechanical dexterity, the thoroughnesss of his work and the 

 amount which heproduces, but by holding out visions of shortened 

 hours of labour, by compelling a minimum of pay which will 

 enable him to live in comfort, of systematically restricting 

 the amount of work done by each individual, even in the 

 shortened day, all under the fatal illusion that by such means a 

 greater number of men will find more remunerative employ- 

 ment. 



The employer is usually credited, by the trade leaders, with 

 accumulating wealth without effort, risk, or anxiety, by the slavish 

 labour of his operatives, while the proofs to the contrary, so easily 

 to be obtained in the slender dividends declared by most industrial 

 enterprises, and in the records of the Bankruptcy Courts, are 

 steadily kept out of view. 



There would be no fault to find with the new class of profes- 

 sional agitators, who live by the discontent which they foment, 

 were they, and the Unions which they manipulate, to contribute 

 in the smallest degree to the obtaining of that work and of those 

 orders, in the execution of which the wage-earning portion of the 

 community have their being. This, the most difficult part of 

 every commercial enterprise, is left to the much-abused capitalist, 

 so that the absurd and impossible system is fast asserting itself, 

 that professional skill, mercantile ability, and capital, shall obtain 

 the work, and run all the risk of design, execution, and financial 

 security ; but that work shall be carried out according to rules 

 which self-constituted and perfectly irresponsible bodies choose 

 to impose. The smallest acquaintance with the principles of 

 political economy would demonstrate that such methods must 

 end in ruin, that they are utterly incompatible with our policy 

 of Free Trade — a system which is perfectly reasonable and 

 proper if thoroughly carried out, and which certainly never con- 

 templated the protection of one particular class, and that, not 

 by edict of the State, but at the bidding of self-constituted tri- 

 bunals whose claims amount to this : — that there shall be free 

 trade in all products which the operatives require to buy, but the 

 strictest protection as to all that they have to sell, namely their 

 labour, and whose ultimate methods are violence, and the 

 coercion of all who difl'er from views which many intelligent but 

 timid workmen know to be at variance with the true interests of 

 their class. 



Under all this lies the socialistic idea of equality in the con- 

 dition of every member of the community, an idea which political 

 economy demonstrates to be utterly Utopian and impossible. 

 Since the creation of mankind the differences in social position 

 and in material comfort which follow naturally from the endless 

 variations of mental and bodily powers in men, have existed, 

 and, in spite of many abortive attempts, more or less violent, 

 to establish equality, will exist for ever ; for it seems to me that 

 the doctrine of Carnot with respect to heat-engines applies by 

 analogy to the question of national prosperity. To obtain 

 mechanical power from a source of heat there must be a fall of 

 temperature, and the greater that fall is the more efficient will 

 the engine be — a dead level of temperature simply means ex- 

 tinction of energy and of life. To ensure active trade and 

 prosperous manufactures there must be a fall of money or of its 

 equivalent from the wealthy to the comparatively poor, the one 

 class is absolutely essential to the other ; the prosperity of the 

 community is bound up in the existence of these differences, and 

 a dead level of wealth would be a dead level of poverty, which 

 would end, as a state of uniform temperature must end, in 

 absolute stagnation and death. 



However much we may regret the inequality which exists in 

 the distribution of wealth and comfort, it is just as much a law 

 of nature as the unequal distribution of warmth, of sunshine, 

 or of rain, and seems to me to follow naturally and inevitably 



