22 rnEPORT—1885. 
which could be added to phosphorus so as to make it ignite readily. So 
it was not till 1833 that matches became a partial success. Intolerably 
bad they then were, dangerously inflammable, horribly poisonous to the 
makers and injurious to the lungs of the consumers. It required another 
discovery by Schriétter in 1845 to change poisonous waxy into innocuous 
red-brick phosphorus in order that these defects might be remedied, and 
to give us the safety-match of the present day. Now what have these 
successive discoveries in science done for the nation, in this single manu- 
facture, by an economy of time? If before 1833 we had made the same 
demands for light that we now do, when we daily consume eight matches 
per head of the population, the tinder-box could have supplied the de- 
mand under the most favourable conditions by an expenditure of one 
quarter of an hour. The lucifer-match supplies a light in fifteen seconds 
on each occasion, or in two minutes for the whole day. Putting these 
differences into a year, the venerable ancient who stil! sticks to his 
tinder-box would require to spend ninety hours yearly in the production 
of light, while the user of lucifer-matches spends twelve hours; so that 
the latter has an economy of seventy-eight hours yearly, or about ten 
working days. Measured by cost of production at one shilling and six- 
pence daily, the economy of time represented in money to our population is 
twenty-six millions of pounds annually. This is a curious instance of the 
manner in which science leads to economy of time and wealth even in a 
small manufacture. In larger industries the economy of time and labour 
produced by the application of scientific discoveries is beyond al! measure- 
ment. Thus the discovery of latent heat by Black led to the inventions 
of Watt; while that of the mechanical equivalent of heat by Joule has 
been the basis of the progressive improvements in the steam-engine which 
enables power to be obtained by a consumption of fuel less than one- 
fourth the amount used twenty years ago. It may be that the engines of 
Watt and Stephenson will yield in their turn to more economical motors ; 
still they have already expanded the wealth, resources, and even the terri- 
tories of England more than all the battles fought by her soldiers or all 
the treaties negotiated by her diplomatists. 
The coal which has hitherto been the chief source of power probably re- 
presents the product of five or six million years during which the sun shone 
upon the plants of the Carboniferous Period, and stored up its energy in this 
convenient form. But we are using this conserved force wastefully and 
prodigally ; for, although horse-power in steam engines has so largely in- 
creased since 1864, two men only now produce what three men did at 
that date. It is only three hundred years since we became a manufactur- 
ing country. According to Professor Dewar, in Jess than two hundred 
years more the coal of this country will be wholly exhausted, and in half 
that time will be difficult to procure. Our not very distant descendants 
will have to face the problem—What will be the condition of England 
without coal? The answer to that question depends upon the intel- 
lectual development of the nation at that time. The value of the in- 
