136 ELECTRICAL ADVANCE IN THE PAST TEN YEARS. 



No existing" industry employs a greater range of materials, from the 

 rarest to the most common, than does electric work. JSToue requires or 

 employs such a variety, in character, kind, and quality, of materials, or 

 of treatment of them, to supply daily needs. Nature has been ransacked 

 to discover whatever may possess qualities desirable in electrical con- 

 struction; and the resources of art and ingenuity have been called to 

 supply whatever might be lacking. 



This material progress, coupled with the civilizing and educative 

 influences naturally accompanying it, as well as the many other ad- 

 vances in the application of science to the needs of mankind, will ever 

 remain the crowning glory of the latter half of the nineteenth century. 



