I 



No. 199.] 329 



has of late years been done — more seems hardly practicable. 

 But who can fix limits to human ingenuity, or set up boundaries to the 

 new uses of science in the arts? The very fact that the careful ap- 

 plication of science to the arts is comparatively in its infancy, holds 

 out encouragement that it is destined to accomplish much more in their 

 advancement. It can take higher and still wider flights, if all unite, 

 like this Institute, in cheering it onward, and in lending the smile of 

 encouragement to what is scientific, and, at the same time practical, 

 in assisting the business affairs of Ufe 



A striking illustration of what more may, pernaps, be attained by 

 labour-saving machinery and other scientific improvements, is developed 

 in the progress of the manufacture of cotton — one man in England, 

 within twenty years after the great inventions in spinning, having been 

 able to perform one hundred and twenty to two hundred-fold what 

 could have been done without them ; and in the next forty years there 

 was performed with them, what would have required, without them, 

 fifty millions of persons j and in seven years more — that is, in 1S33 — 

 eighty millions, and now, piobably. over a hundretl millions. By con- 

 tinued careful attention, it is (ioubtless destini^d hereafter to advances, 

 similar in rapidity beyond what now exists here ; and of this we have 

 had strong evidence, in a spinninglnachine at the present exhibition. 



There is another mode of illustrating this change, and the grounds 

 of hope for still greater improvement, aided as we are, and stimulated, 

 rather than satiated, by those already made. Thus it has been 

 remarked : — "Even at the present day, the Hindoo, seated on the 

 ground, with his legs in a hole, and the weft of his muslin tied to the 

 branches of a couple of trees, throws his shuttle with a skill that, in 

 the end, produces the most beautiful muslin or calico -, but yet such is 

 the superiority obtained by the use of machinery, that the cotton grown 

 on his native plains can be brought ten thousand miles, cleansed, spun, 

 woven, diied, packed, and carried back again, and then sold in the 

 province where its woolly fibre first silvered the bud, at a less price 

 than that of the cloth produced by the Indian aitisan." 



All with us are more and more alive — active — moving onward — 

 improving. 



