August 1, 1864.] THE TECHNOLOGIST. 



THE BASIS OP TECHNOLOGY. 5 



the other, and make the wind carry him round and round the globe, 

 whithersoever he will. These are achievements of Directive Science ; 

 multitudes more might be named. The clock, for example, moved by 

 the falling weight ; the hour-glass, with its noiseless shower of sand ; the 

 wheel turned by the stream of water, the mill wrought by the ebb and 

 flow of the tide, the sea-salt crystallized by the heat of the sun, the 

 boracic acid of the volcanic lagoon evaporated by the heat of the volcano ; 

 the direction and force of the wind noted down on paper by the anemo- 

 meter, i. e.. by a pen put between the fingers of the wind itself ; the 

 photographic pictures which we compel the sun lo draw with a chemical 

 pencil of his own providing, as often as we choose to spread a tablet 

 before him : those are but a few familiar examples of the office of Direc- 

 tive Science. Betweeu it and Registrative Science it is impossible to* 

 draw a sharp line of demarcation. A balance or steelyard, for example, 

 falls as much within the one category as the other ; so do all kinds of 

 chronometers. But where we avail ourselves of a natural agency, like 

 the winds, as a mechanical motive power, or like solar heat, to induce 

 chemical change, we may conveniently refer it to Directive Science ; 

 whilst where we employ such agency simply to signal to us a change in 

 events, as when the sun-dial marks the passage of time, the compass- 

 needle altered direction in space, or the thermometer altered tempe- 

 rature of the atmosphere, we may with equal propriety refer it to 

 Registrative Science. 



Again, as Registration is but carefully made, fully registered, or pro- 

 longed Observation, they must shade into each other. It is important, 

 however, to keep them as distinct as we can in reference to Technology ; 

 and the essence of this distinction lies mainly in the different nature of 

 the instruments which they severally employ. The object of the natu- 

 ralist, using that term in its widest sense, is to separate the complex 

 wholes which on every side Nature presents, into their sinrplest com- 

 ponents. His chief implements, accordingly, are analytical, and are repre- 

 sented by such instruments as the telescope of the astronomer, the 

 microscope of the botanist, the mining axe of the geologist, the hammer 

 of the mineralogist, the scalpel of the anatomist, and the voltaic battery 

 of the chemist. 



The instruments of Registrative Science, on the other hand, are, in 

 the simplest sense of the word ? significant and metrical. They signal 

 the occurrence of a phenomenon ; they note the presence of a force, in- 

 dicate the line of its action, and often also measure its intensity and 

 quantity. Such instruments are the wind-vane, compass-needle, ther- 

 mometer, barometer, chronometer, voltameter, and many more. These 

 instruments are part of the armament of the Naturalist, who is free to 

 use them all ; but the disciple of Registrative Science is not equally free 

 to use the analytical implements of the observer. I may compare the 

 difference between the function of the registrars and the observers in 

 science to that which subsists betweeu the musicians of an army and its 



