for the year 1879. xix 



come in company, are certainly not yet proven to be in the 

 relation of cause and effect. A few more periodic coinci- 

 dences will be required to show a satisfactory appearance of 

 " a law" in the matter ; but as the case now stands, science 

 can only state that experience has taught us that bad times, 

 with droughts, floods, or other physical disasters, inevitably 

 follow, though perhaps not at regular intervals, periods of 

 prosperity and good times as surely as one ocean wave follows 

 another, and that the great lesson to be learned is to lay up 

 for the metaphorical rainy day, and provide in times of 

 prosperity and plenty for the trough of the wave which 

 naturally succeeds. 



While new discoveries in electricity appear to have come 

 to an end for a time, the past year has been most remark- 

 able for the numerous and wonderful applications of former 

 discoveries to. practical purposes. It has been a period of 

 enormous inventive activity in this direction, and something 

 approaching to a craze has seized upon the civilised world 

 with regard to the applications of this force. This applies more 

 particularly to the electric light, concerning which so much 

 has been written and said of late that I shall content myself 

 with the remark that the public have been led by sanguine 

 inventors and gushing writers to a too exalted idea of the 

 practical value of this light, and as they become familiar 

 with its advantages and drawbacks become proportionably 

 disappointed. For many special purposes this beautiful light 

 can have no rival but daylight ; but to suppose it can yet 

 awhile replace our ordinary modes of illumination, or, 

 indeed, that it can ever do so economically, amounts to a 

 craze, or something very like one. 



The telephone and microphone are now, in their improved 

 forms, really scientific instruments, and most useful tools in 

 many investigations. The capabilities of these instruments 

 were at first very much over-stated, and the improved ones 

 scarcely attain to the excellence claimed for the early crude 

 forms. It appears now possible to construct a telephone by 

 which words spoken from a distance can be heard and under- 



