AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 31 



Look at the progress made, and look for more iu tlie near 

 future ! To substitute mechanic powers for animal powers is a 

 grand object now. Sitice the astounding displacement of tens of 

 thousands of post-horses at ten miles an hour, by steam-horses at 

 fifty to one hundred miles an hour, Boydell of -London has con- 

 trived a steam traction engine, which, under view of a committee 

 of the British government, July last dragged a heavy siege can- 

 non and its accompaniments, weighing eighteen tons, up a hill of 

 one in ten, and down the other side one in eight, and then over a 

 marsh where horses mire, using what is termed " endless rail- 

 ways" — something like a snow-shoe, continually placed before 

 and under the wheels. The committee say, that all the horses in 

 the artillery service could not have dragged that cannon over 

 that marsh. 



Newton's London Journal of May or June last, gives us notice 

 that the editor, who had been familiar with the progress of the 

 steam engine from the day of Watt, now believes that the world 

 is on the eve of a discovery of power which will utterly super- 

 sede steam everywhere, and intimates that motor to be electro- 

 magnetic. Lardner, in 1851, speaks thus on that point: "And 

 we may safely pronounce that, ere long, we shall have other, and 

 more powerful agents than steam. Philosophy already directs 

 her finger at sources of inexhaustible power, in the phenomena of 

 electricity and magnetism. The alternate decomposition, and 

 recomposition of water by electric action, has too close an anal- 

 ogy to the alternate processes of vaporization and condensation, 

 not to occur at once to every mind. All things justify the 

 expectation that we are on the eve of mechanical discoveries still 

 greater than any which have yet appeared; and tliat the steam- 

 engine itself^ with all its gigantic powers^ will dwindle into insignifi- 

 cance^ in comparison with the energies of nature which are soon to 

 be revealed; a7id the day will C07ne when the steam engine will cease 

 to exist J except in the pages of lustoryP 



The American Institute feels inspired, by its own title, to try to 



» 



promote all good over all America. Nor will the Institute fail 

 to fill up all the mighty space allotted and yet to be given to us. 



