July 19, 1901.] 



SCIENCE. 



93 



years ago, the man of enterprise who re- 

 sided fifty miles from a large city and .wished 

 to consult an engineer regarding a project 

 for a new canal, arose before daylight, 

 struck a spark from his flint and steel, 

 which, falling on a scrap of tinder, was 

 blown by him into flame and from that a 

 tallow dip w^as lighted. In the same prim- 

 itive manner the wood fire was kindled on 

 the kitchen hearth and his breakfast was 

 cooked in a pot and kettle suspended from 

 the iron crane in the fireplace. Entering 

 the cumbrous stage coach, hung on leather 

 springs, which passed his door, he was 

 driven over muddy roads, crossing the nar- 

 row streams on wooden trestle bridges and 

 the navigable rivers on a ferry boat, the 

 paddle wheels of which were turned by a 

 mule on a treadmill. At last he was landed 

 in the city, where he walked through dirty 

 streets paved with cobble-stones until he 

 reached his destination, a plain three-story 

 brick building founded on sand, with a damp 

 cellar and a cesspool in the back yard. En- 

 tering a dark hall, he climbed a wooden 

 staircase and was ushered into a neat room, 

 rag-carpeted, warmed by a wood fire on the 

 open hearth and lighted by a sperm- oil 

 lamp with one wick, for it was dark by this 

 time. No wonder that before proceeding 

 to business he was glad to take a good stifi* 

 noggin of New England rum. 



To-day, his grandson, living at the old 

 homestead, while comfortably eating his 

 breakfast which has been cooked over a gas 

 range, reads in his morning paper that the 

 high dam of the irrigation reservoir in Ari- 

 zona, in which he is interested, sprang a 

 leak the day before, and he telegraphs to 

 his engineer in the city that he will meet 

 him at his office at noon. Then, striking a 

 match, he lights the lamp of his automobile 

 which is fed by petroleum brought 200 miles 

 underground in pipes from the wells, rolls 

 over macadamized roads to the railroad 

 station, where he boards a luxuriously ap- 



pointed train, by which he is carried above 

 all highways, through tunnels, under riverS;^ 

 or across them on long-span steel bridges, 

 and in an hour is deposited in the heart of 

 the city, where he has his choice of proceed- 

 ing to his destination through clean ahd 

 asphalt- paved streets in electric surface cars 

 at 9 miles an hour, elevated steam cars at 

 12 miles an hour, or through well-lighted 

 and ventilated tunnels at 15 miles an hour. 

 Eeaching the spot his grandfather had 

 visited, he finds there a huge and highly 

 decorated building, twenty or more stories 

 high. Founded on the primeval rock, far 

 below the surface of the natural ground, 

 the superjacent strata of compressible ma- 

 terial having been penetrated by caissons 

 of sheet metal sunk by the use of air com- 

 pressed by powerful pumps driven by steam 

 or electricity generated at a power station 

 half a mile or more away, and these caissons 

 filled with a manufactured rock such as the 

 ordinary processes of nature would require 

 millions of years to produce, there is 

 erected a cage of steel, the composition of 

 which has been specified, and the form and 

 mode of construction of which have been so 

 computed that the force of the elements 

 cannot overthrow the structure or even 

 cause it to sway perceptibly. Towering 

 above the courts of Law, the temples of 

 Eeligion and the palaces of the Arts, 

 the meshes of this mighty cage are filled 

 with products of the earth, the mine and 

 the forest, transformed so as to be strong 

 and light and incombustible, and all inter- 

 woven with pipes and wires, each in its- 

 proper place and noted on the plans. In 

 one set of these pipes there is pure water, 

 which has been collected from a mountain 

 area of igneous geological formation, de- 

 populated and free from swamps, on which 

 a record of the daily rainfall is kept, and 

 in which impounding reservoirs have been 

 constructed by masonry dams across its 

 valleys. From these reservoirs the water^ 



