70 SCIENCE IN SHORT CHAPTERS. 



course of construction ; but the trout have suffered and the 

 woodcocks are gone. 



We may thus measure the good against the evil as it 

 stands here in the headquarters of oil-making, and should 

 add to one side the advantages which the cheap and bril- 

 liant light affords advantages which we might continue to 

 enumerate, but they are so obvious that it is unnecessary 

 to go further. 



There is one important and curious matter which must 

 not be omitted. This, like the moral and intellectual ad- 

 vantages of the cheap paraffin light, has hitherto remained 

 unnoticed, viz., that the introduction of mineral oils and 

 solid paraffin for purposes of illumination and lubrication 

 lias largely increased the world's supply of food. 



This may not be generally obvious at first sight ; but to 

 him, who, like the writer, has had many a supper at an 

 Italian osteria with peasants and carbonari, it is obvious 

 enough. He will remember how often he has seen the 

 lamp that has lighted himself and companions to their sup- 

 per filled from the same flask as supplied the salad which 

 formed so important a part of the supper itself. Through- 

 out the South of Europe salads are most important ele- 

 ments of national food, and when thus abundantly eaten 

 the oil is quite necessary, the oil is also used for many of 

 the cookery operations where butter is used here, and this 

 same olive oil has hitherto been the chief, and in some 

 places the sole, illuminating agent. The poor peasant of 

 the South looks jealously at his lamp, and feeds its stingily, 

 for it consumes his richest and choicest food, and, if well 

 supplied, would eat as much as a fair-sized baby. 



The Russian peasant and other Northern people have a 

 similar struggle in the matter of tallow. It is their choicest 

 dainty, and yet, to their bitter grief, they have been com- 

 pelled to burn it. Hundreds and thousands of tons of this 

 and of olive oil have been annually consumed for the lubri- 

 cation of our steam engines and other machines. A better 

 time is approaching now that paraffin lamps are so rapidly 

 becoming the chief illuminators of the whole civilized 

 world, superseding the crude tallow caudle and the antique 

 olive-oil lamp, while, at the same time, the tallow candle is 



