Ixvi REPORT — 1866. 



tlie slight temporary electrization of the card converts into a continuous 

 flood of intense electricity the force supplied by the arm of the operator. 



These results offer great promise of extended apjjlication ; they show that, 

 by a mere formal disposition of matter, one force can be converted into an- 

 other, and that not to the limited extent hitherto attained, but to an extent 

 coordinate, or nearly so, with the increased initial force, so that, by a mere 

 change in the arrangement of apparatus, a means of absorbing and again 

 eliminating in a new form a given force may be obtained to an indefinite 

 extent. As we may, in a not very distant future, need, for the daily uses of 

 mankind, heat, light, and mechanical force, and find our present resources 

 exhaiisted, the more we can invent new modes of conversion of forces, the 

 more prospect we have of practically supplying such want. It is but a month 

 from this time that the greatest triumph of force-conversion has been attained. 

 The chemical action generated by a little salt water on a few pieces of zinc 

 wiU now enable us to converse with inhabitants of the opposite hemisphere 

 of this planet, and 



" Put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes." 



The Atlantic Telegraph is an accomplished fact. 



In physiology very considerable strides are being made by studying the 

 relation of organized bodies to external forces ; and this branch of inquiry has 

 been promoted by the labours of Carpenter, Bence Jones, Playfair, E. Smith, 

 Frankland, and others. Vegetables acted on by light and heat, decompose 

 water, ammonia, and carbonic acid, and transform them into, among other 

 substances, oxalate of lime, lactic acid, starch, sugar, steariue, urea, and 

 ultimately albumen ; while the animal reverses the process, as does vegetable 

 decay, and produces from albumen, urea, stcarine, sugar, starch, lactic acid, 

 oxalate of lime, and ultimately ammonia, water, and carbonic acid. 



As, moreover, heat and light are absorbed, or converted in forming the syn- 

 thetic processes going on in the vegetable, so conversely heat and sometimes 

 light is given off by the living animal ; but it must not be forgotten that the 

 line of demarcation between a vegetable and an animal is difficult to draw, 

 that there are no single attributes which are peculiar to either, and that it is 

 only by a number of characteristics that either can be defined. 



The series of processes above given may be simulated by the chemist in 

 his laboratory ; and the amount of labour wliich a man has undergone in the 

 course of twenty-four hours may be approximately arrived at by an exami- 

 nation of the chemical changes which have taken place in his body, changed 

 forms in matter indicating the anterior exercise of dynamical force. That 

 muscular action is produced or supported by chemical change would probably 

 now be a generally accepted doctrine ; but while many have thought that 

 muscular power is derived from the oxidation of albuminous or nitrogenized 

 substances, several recent researches seem to show that the latter is rather 

 an accomiDaniment than a cause of the former, and that it is by the oxidation 

 of carbon and hydrogen compounds that muscular force is supplied. Traube 

 has been prominent in advancing this view, and experiments detailed in 

 a paper published this year by two Swiss professors, Drs. Fick and Wislicenus, 

 which were made by and upon themselves in an ascent of the Faulhoni, have 

 gone far to confii'm it. Having fed themselves before and during the ascent, 

 upon starch, fat, and sugar, avoiding all nitrogenized compounds, they found 

 that the consumption of such food was amplj- sufficient to supply the force 

 necessaiy for their expedition, and that they felt no exhaustion. By appro- 

 priate chemical examination they ascertained that there was no notable 



