22 Work. 



material source of energy by which all kinds of work in this 

 world are performed. By his mighty agency in prehistoric 

 times those vast masses of vegetation, which we now recover as 

 coal, were formed, upon which we now so largely depend for the 

 generation of power. Without his aid all animal and vegetable 

 life would ceai>e to exist. Under his influence those atmospheric 

 changes occur which produce the wind and cause the clouds 

 to form, from which the rivers and lakes receive their supply. 

 Day by day we are advancing in the development of the resources 

 which nature has placed at our disposal, and day by day we are 

 attaining far higher results, with a less percentage of so called 

 "loss," though we know that what appears lost to us is merely 

 a change of condition. Who can tell but that in the future, 

 mankind shall benefit by that mysterious agency of which we 

 know so comparatively little, and only so far as to guard ourselves 

 against its destructive capabilities ? — namely, atmospheric 

 electricity. 



"If we look back even for a hundred years, and contemplate 

 the crude appliances which were then considered marvels, 

 and compare them with the discoveries of the present day, and 

 then allow our fancies to travel forward to the year 1989, and 

 try to imagine what shall then be known in the various 

 branches of science, it makes us almost feel that with all we 

 have learned we are not much more than on the threshold of 

 what the future will reveal to our successors." 



During the discourse a number of interesting experiments 

 were performed by the lecturer, amongst them being the 

 breaking of a bar of cast iron four inches square by a small 

 hydraulic jack lent by Messrs. Tangye, Birmingham, already 

 referred to, and the working of beautiful models of steam engines 

 and water wheels. 



