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all that I have collected to illustrate the matter before us, has long 

 been before the public in a printed form. The latter circumstance, 

 however, is the very one which has enabled me to fulfil my pledge, 

 and without further apology I shall proceed to the performance of 

 my task. 



Whatever may have been the original condition of the human spe- 

 cies, whether it dragged out a painful existence in a state of utter 

 barbarism and was driven by hard necessity to seek arts, without 

 which we should consider life too hard a burthen to bear, or whether, 

 as is the more reasonable hypothesis, man derived from his creator 

 with his breath, a knowledge of the things most essential to his com- 

 fort, we have no record that he was at any time ignorant of the use 

 of fire. The grovelling schools of philosophy, that could not scan 

 the high destinies of the immortal soul of man, have been puzzled to 

 draw the line of distinction between him and the brute creation; and 

 in one of the most ingenious of their attempts, he has been defined 

 " a cooking animal." However, we may smile at the distinction, it 

 is not the less sound, and in the general habit of the human race to 

 subject their food to preparation by fire, is to be found the source of 

 their knowledge of steam, and of course the origin of the steam en- 

 gine. No one has ever seen water boiled in a covered vessel who 

 has not occasionally remarked the lid thrown off with violence. 

 There is the first germ of the identical force we now apply to so 

 many important uses. Nor can it have escaped the most inattentive 

 observer, that the whole liquid is often projected in bubbles from the 

 mouth of the vessel. Here we have the cause to which most of the 

 dangers attending the use of steam are owing. 



It is not intended to trouble you with an account of the innumera- 

 ble attempts which were made to apply the force rendered apparent 

 in the first of the foregoing facts, to practical purposes. Modern re- 

 searches have proved beyond all question that most of the facts whose 

 discovery has been the boast of modern science, were known in remote 

 antiquity, insulated indeed, and detached from any system of knowl- 

 edge, but still in a form capable of practical application. But while 

 we, moderns seek, and often successfully, to apply such discoveries 

 to the improvement of the physical condition of our race, and while 

 such new fact is either made use of by its discoverer for the purpose 

 of profit, or blazoned abroad as the basis of an honest fame, the 



