26 



world are now united by materially slender, but morally power- 

 ful bonds, enabling persons in different hemispheres to converse 

 with one another across continents and through oceans. The 

 merchant in London can in a day buy a cargo of rice or 

 cotton in India, or tea in China ; and, on the same day, can 

 arrange for the immediate payment of his purchase by a remit- 

 tance of silver direct from San Francisco. Important transactions 

 now are often done so closely that, in an operation of this nature, 

 sometimes involving delicate and intricate calculations in cross- 

 exchanges, the cost and time involved in remitting hard money 

 from this country would often be sufficient to render the 

 business unprofitable, if not impossible. Speaking the other 

 day at Birmingham, the eminent electrician, Dr. Siemens, said 

 that " that form of energy known as the electric current was 

 nothing more than the philosopher's delight forty years ago ; " 

 and long since that period it continued to be regarded as an un- 

 manageable element. Now it has been rendered tractable, forced 

 to admit the superiority of its master, and even submitting to 

 be stored and carried about for use when and where required. 

 The importance of these discoveries is only now being brought 

 home to some of us in the electric light and the telephone. One 

 of the spinning mills in town is now being lit by electricity : and 

 most of the arrangements for this meeting were made by our 

 hon. secretary, Dr. Workman, and myself conversing freely by 

 means of the telephone between his house in Balmoral Terrace 

 and my office in Corporation Street, far asunder at quite 

 different ends of the town. The high authority just named 

 (Dr. Siemens) considers electricity destined to supply both the 

 light and much of the power of the future. 



I suppose there is no science, the pursuit of which and its 

 application to practical objects, has done more for the benefit of 

 mankind than chemistry. It has added to the productive 

 power of the soil, and thus aided agriculture by ascertaining, 

 pointing out, and supplying the constituents most wanted for 

 the production of any particular crop ; by the manufacture of 

 phosphates, and in the utilisation of sewage, all of which tend, 

 by increasing the supplies, to reduce the prices of food for the 



