THE BIOLOGY OF DAILY LIFE. 125 



violent applications (as, for instance, in the 

 smelting of metals by the introduction of well- 

 adapted fluxes, whereby we obtain the whole 

 produce of the ore in its purest state), or in its 

 milder forms, as in sugar-refining (the whole 

 modern practice of which depends on a curious 

 and delicate remark of a late eminent scientific 

 chemist on the nice adjustment of temperature 

 at which the crystallization of syrup takes 

 place) ; and a thousand other arts which it 

 would be tedious to enumerate !" (Nat Philo- 

 sophy, chap, iii., p. 64, Lardner's Edit. 1833.) 



This was written more than sixty years ago. By 

 simple lapse of time we are in a position to judge of 

 those matters of which Herschel could then speak 

 only as in prophecy. With consummate discernment 

 did that great man " look into the seeds of time," and, 

 with almost unerring correctness, " say which grain 

 would grow and which would not." Indeed, che- 

 mistry has more than fulfilled all the promise of its 

 youth, and the prophecies going before, with one, and 

 one only, exception. 



It has facilitated all arts, it has created new in- 

 dustries, it has brought a livelihood to thousands, 

 and even renewed politically, and altered, the face 

 of the globe. Its philosophy has affected all phi- 

 losophy, and our deepest speculations about matter 

 and spirit are chemical, at least in form. Chemical 

 processes are now applied to star and nebula, on the 

 very farthest confines of space, and Herschel's own 

 magnificent and untiring labours, in cataloguing the 

 constellations, has been handed on to chemistry to 



