20 rneport—1885. 
The consequences of the progressive discoveries have added largely to 
our knowledge of life, and have given a marvellous development to the 
industrial arts. Combustion and respiration govern a wide range of 
processes. The economical use of fuel, the growth of plants, the food of 
animals, the processes of husbandry, the maintenance of public health, 
the origin and cure of disease, the production of alcoholic drinks, the 
processes of making vinegar and saltpetre—all these and many other 
kinds of knowledge have been brought under the dominion of law. No 
doubt animals respired, fuel burned, plants grew, sugar fermented, before 
we knew how they depended upon air. But as the knowledge was 
empirical, it could not be intelligently directed. Now all these processes 
are ranged in order under a wise economy of Nature, and can be directed 
to the utilities of life; for it is true, as Swedenborg says, that ‘ human 
ends always ascend as Nature descends.’ There is scarcely a large 
industry in the world which has not received a mighty impulse by the 
better knowledge of air acquired within a hundred years. If I had time 
I could show still more strikingly the industrial advantages which have 
followed from Cavendish’s discovery of the composition of water. I wish 
that I could have done this, because it was Addison who foolishly said, 
and Paley who as unwisely approved the remark, ‘that mankind required 
to know no more about water than the temperature at which it froze and 
boiled, and the mode of making steam.’ 
When we examine the order of progress in the arts, even before they 
are illumined by science, their improvements seem to be the resultants of 
three conditions. 
1. The substitution of natural forces for brute animal power, as 
when Hercules used the waters of the Alpheus to cleanse the Augean 
stables; or when a Kamchadal of Eastern Asia, who has been three 
years hollowing out a canoe, finds that he can do it in a few hours by 
fire. 
2. The economy of time, as when a calendering machine produces 
the same gloss to miles of calico that an African savage gives to a few 
inches by rubbing it with the shell of a snail ; or the economy of produc- 
tion, as when steel pens, sold when first introduced at one shilling apiece, 
are now sold at a penny per dozen; or when steel rails, lately costing 
451. per ton, can now be sold at 5/. 
3. Methods of utilising waste products, or of endowing them with 
properties which render them of increased value to industry, as when 
waste scrap iron and the galls on the oak are converted into ink ; or the 
badly-smelling waste of gasworks is transformed into fragrant essences, 
brilliant dyes, and fertilising manure; or when the eflete matter of 
animals or old bones is changed into lucifer-matches. 
All three results are often combined when a single end is obtained— 
at all events, economy of time and production invariably follows when 
natural forces substitute brute animal force. In industrial progress the 
sweat of the brow is lessened by the conceptions of the brain. How 
