298 



KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



150 or 200 books, each half a dozen times as large, filled each year. Then the 

 work was done by Franklin for $600 a year, now by 700 clerks, for, perhaps, a 

 million a year. 



Within my memory, some of the sciences with which engineers have spe- 

 cially to do, have grown from infancy into at least adolescence. 



For example, geology was a collection of interesting but isolated facts, and 

 unverified theories, now it is a science. It used to be considered terribly hetero- 

 dox, and a young man who cared to stand well with good people found it safest 

 to say nothing about it. To read geology was next to reading Tom Paine. A 

 learned and excellent divine once confidently informed me that all the supposed 

 plants and animals found in the rocks were merely stones that happened to come 

 out in that shape. Now geology has an important connection with the instruc- 

 tion in theological seminaries. 



Business and population depend on geology. A geological map of England 

 enables one to locate its occupations and the denser populations. An outcrop of 

 gneiss, extending southwest from New York, forms the limit of tide in the rivers, 

 and fixes the location of Trenton, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Baltimore, George- 

 town, Richmond and other cities to the southwest. 



When I studied chemistry at school the components of compound bodies 

 were given in percentages. For example, limestone was 48 per cent., oxygen 12 

 per cent, carbon and 40 per cent, calcium. Of course, nobody could remember 

 such proportions. Nor did it give the proximate elements of the compound. 

 The atomic theory, as it was called, was known, but chemists were cautious 

 about accepting it. They had not yet learned to distinguish between the theory 

 of atoms, and Xh^tfad of equivalents. 



One of the most surprising feats of modern science is seen in the daily pre- 

 dictions we have of the morrow's weather. Time was, and many of us remember 

 back to it, when predictions were made, and by intelligent people, too, from the 

 phases of the moon, from weather breeders, from the weather on certain anniver- 

 saries, and the like. 



More than a century ago Franklin pointed out the fact that northeast storms 

 begin in the southwest, two or three days earher at New Orleans than at Phila- 

 delphia. Much information was afterward accumulated, and scientific investiga- 

 tions were from time to time made by many able men. About forty years ago 

 Prof. Espy, of Philadelphia, announced his theory, that rain is caused by the 

 rarefaction and consequent upper movement of the mixed air and vapor into a 

 colder region, where the vapor is condensed and falls into rain, and that this 

 rarefaction produced by the heated surface of the earth, or by fire or otherwise,^ 

 causes the denser air to flow in from every side, so that the wind blows toward 

 the rain. All this has been since verified. But this sanguine philosopher did 

 not get the credit he really deserved, but drew upon himself the ridicule of the 

 world, by claiming for his discovery more than it could accomplish, especially 

 by proposing to raise the Mississippi by setting fire to the woods on the Alleghany 

 Mountains, when the hygrometer showed much moisture, and so getting the up- 



