SCIENCE AT THE BEGINNING OF THE CENTURY 



lie but a hair's-breadth off the beaten track. Who can 

 to-day foretell what revelations may be made, what use- 

 ful arts developed, forty years hence through the agency 

 of what we now call the new photography ? 



It is no part of my purpose, however, to attempt the 

 impossible feat of casting a horoscope for the new pho- 

 tography. My present theme is reminiscent, not pro- 

 phetic. I wish to recall what knowledge of the sciences 

 men had in the days when that discovery of Wedgwood 

 and Davy was made, almost a hundred years ago ; to 

 inquire what was the scientific horizon of a person 

 standing at the threshold of our own century. Let us 

 glance briefly at each main department of the science of 

 that time, that we may know whither men's minds were 

 trending in those closing days of the eighteenth century, 

 and what were the chief scientific legacies of that cen- 

 tury to its successor. 



ii 



In the field of astronomy the central figure during 

 this closing epoch of the eighteenth century is William 

 Herschel, the Hanoverian, whom England has made 

 hers by adoption. He is a man with a positive genius 

 for sidereal discovery. At first a mere amateur in as- 

 tronomy, he snatches time from his duties as music- 

 teacher to grind him a telescopic mirror, and begins gaz- 

 ing at the stars. Not content with his first telescope, 

 he makes another, and another, and he has such genius 

 for the work that he soon possesses a better instrument 

 than was ever made before. His patience in grinding 

 the curved reflective surface is monumental. Some- 

 times for sixteen hours together he must walk steadily 

 about the mirror, polishing it, without once removing 



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