SCIENCE IN MANCHESTER, 



FOR THE FIRST CENTENARY OF THE 



LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY. 



APRIL 1881. 



CHAPTER I. 



GENERAL. 



WE have lived as a society for a hundred years, and seen 

 the early years of Steam, Electricity, and Chemistry ; we 

 have heard our own words repeated by metals that had 

 learnt our language, and the sound of our own voices 

 carried forward by a beam of light as if we were at last 

 having some promise of communicating with beings of 

 other worlds and of other ages long gone by. It is natural 

 at such a stage that we should look round and consider 

 what we have done to assist the world in this great advance, 

 and to seek to know if we have deserved to live in such an 

 age. 



We are quite aware that we have been in a county 

 which has shown us little sympathy by any of its acts, and 

 that we are looked on as some old deserted church in a 

 great city, or as a community united by an interest in a 

 region of fancy or of thought, but not of action, and 



