722 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
" E'en ministers that hae been kenned, 
In holy rapture, 
A rousing whid at times to vend. 
And nail't wi' scripture." 
But somewhere I must close a review which, carried to the end, would con- 
sume days. Burke tells us that there are two and only two, foundations of law : 
" And they are both of them conditions without which nothing can give it 
force; equity and utility." 
" The one is what Philo with propriety and beauty calls the mother of jus- 
tice," and the other is that " general and public utility connected with and derived 
from our rational nature." 
And of medicine can we not say the same? Does not a lofty integrity in- 
form all its best efforts? And is not beneficence the solid wall supporting its 
gilded and resplendent home ? At the last it ends in this : 
To draw from great nature the mysteries of being and its perpetuity to hold 
in due and proper balance the reciprocal functions of mind and body, and to 
smooth the downward path of phj^sical hfe so that when the end comes we may 
go away from it, 
" Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 
About him and lies down to pleasant dreams." 
MINERALOGY AND METALLURGY, 
THE EARLIEST USE OF IRON. 
JAMES M. SWANK. 
The use of iron can be traced to the earliest ages of antiquity. It was first 
used in Asia, the birthplace of the human race, and soon after the time when 
" men began to multiply on the face of the earth." Tubal Cain, who was born 
in the seventh generation from Adam, is described as "an instructor of every 
artificer in brass and iron." The Egyptians, whose existence as a nation pro- 
bably dates from the second generation after Noah, and whose civilization is the 
most ancient of which we have any exact knowledge, were at an early period 
familiar with the use of iron, and it seems probable that they were engaged in 
its manufacture. Iron tools are mentioned by Herodotus as having been used 
in the construction of the pyramids. In the sepulchres at Thebes and Memphis, 
cities of such great antiquity that their origin is lost, butchers are represented as 
using tools which archgeologists decide to have been made of iron and steel. 
Iron sickles are also pictured in the tombs at Memphis, and at Thebes various 
