August 1, 1864.] THE TECHNOLOGIST. 



THE BASIS OP TECHNOLOGY. 9 



wields as movers or transformers of matter are modifications of sun- 

 force. It was bestowed upon antediluvian plants, and they locked it up 

 for a season inHie woody tissue which it enabled them to weave, and 

 afterwards time changed that into coal ; and the steam-engine, which 

 we complacently call ours, and claim patents for, burns that coal into 

 lever-force and steam-hammer power, and is, in truth, a sun-engine. 

 And the plants of our own day receive as liberally from the sun, and 

 condense his force into the charcoal which we extract from them, and 

 expend in smelting metallic ores. With the smelted metals we make 

 voltaic batteries, and magnets, and telegraph wires ; and call the modified 

 sun-force electricity and magnetism, and say it is ours, and ask if we 

 may not do what we like with our own. 



And again, the plants which we cultivate concentrate sun-force in 

 grass, hay, oats, wheat, and other grains and fibres, which seem only 

 suitable to feed cattle and beasts of burden with. But by-and-by a 

 Spanish bull-fighter is transfixed by this force, through the horns of a 

 bull, and dies unaware of his classical fate, pierced to the heart by an 

 arrow from A.pollo, the Sun-God's bow. -On English commons prizes are 

 run for, by steeds which are truly coursers of the sun, for his force is 

 swelling in their muscles and throbbing in their veins, and horse-power 

 is but another name for sun-power. Nor is it otherwise with their 

 riders ; for they, too, have been fed upon light, and made strong with 

 fruits and flesh which have been nourished by the sun. His heat warms 

 their blood, his light shines in their eyes ; they cannot deal a blow which 

 is not a coup de soleil, a veritable sun-stroke ; nor express a thought 

 without help from him. 



In grave earnestness, let me remind you, that as force cannot be 

 annihilated any more than matter, but can only be changed in its mode 

 of manifestation, so it appears beyond doubt that the force generated by 

 the sun, and conveyed by his rays in the guise of heat, light, and chemical 

 power, to the earth, is not extinguished there, but only changes its form. 

 It apparently disappears when it falls upon plants, which never grow 

 without it ; but we cannot doubt that it is working in a new shape in 

 their organs and tissues, and reappears in the heat and light which they 

 give out when they are burned. This heat, which is sun-heat at second 

 hand, we again seem to lose when we use plants as fuel in our boiler- 

 furnaces ; but it has only disguised itself, without loss of power, in the 

 elasticity of the steam, and will again seem lost, when it is translated 

 into the momentum of the heavy piston, and the whirling power of a 

 million of wheels. 



The second-hand heat of the sun appears equally lost when vegetable 

 fuel is expended in reducing metals ; but oxidize these metals in a 

 galvanic battery, and it will reappear as chemical force, as electricity, as 

 magnetism, as heat the most intense ; and, in the electro-carbon light, 

 will return almost to the condition of sunshine again. 



This second-hand plant-heat appears equally lost when vegetables 

 vol. v. c 



