August 1, 1864.] THE TECHNOLOGIST. 



THE BASIS OF TECHNOLOGY. 13 



crushing work can be welded together, made to incorporate into new 

 substances, and assume new forms. Two, ten, twenty, the whole sixty- 

 simplest bodies may be taken, in equal or unequal quantities, and from 

 each of the endless mixtures a new wonder will take shape under the 

 hammer. 



So he stands with a weapon in each hand, for he is ambidextrous ; 

 and moreover, he can wield both weapons at once. Neither are these 

 his only tools. Equipped with them and with others, the chemist is 

 pre-eminently a transformer, from the fourfold force which he can bring 

 to bear upon material things. 



First : He can analyse or decompose them into their last elements, 

 and avail himself of these, as he does, for example, when he extracts the 

 sulphur and the metal of an ore, and uses both ; or when he takes out 

 of salt the chlorine, and bleaches with it ; and the sodium, and makes 

 soap with it. Or he can partially analyse them, reducing them from 

 their native great complexity to perfect simplicity, step by step ; doing 

 this by steps of different length, and obtaining something useful at each 

 stage. Thus, instead of at once decomposing sugar into carbon, hydro- 

 gen, and oxygen, he can stop short of this, and decompose it into char- 

 coal and water ; or into alcohol and carbonic acid ; or into oxalic acid 

 and carbonic acid ; or into the acid of milk (lactic acid) ; or into the acid 

 of butter (butyric acid) ; or into manna and gum ; or into mixtures of 

 various of these, and of other peculiar and highly-prized products. 



Secondly : He can unite bodies, so as to obtain artificially compounds 

 which are rare in nature or difficult to procure. Thus, instead of dig- 

 ging in Illyria for cinnabar, he heats together sulphur and quicksilver, 

 and makes vermilion in England ; instead of sending to the Italian vol- 

 canoes for alum, he makes it at home from clay and oil of vitriol ; instead 

 of burning sea-weeds in Shetland to get carbonate of soda, or sailing to 

 India for saltpetre, he produces these at his own door, by uniting their 

 constituent acids and bases. Further, out of the sixty elements he 

 manufactures compounds of the greatest value to the industrialist, which 

 are not to be found in nature at all, such as brass, gun-metal, cast iron, 

 steel, percussion powder, bleaching powder, chloroform. 



Thirdly : He can take certain constituents from a compound whilst 

 he adds in their place others, so that analysis and synthesis proceed side 

 by side. Thus he removes oxygen from iron ore, and replaces it by 

 carbon, converting thereby the iron into steel. He begins with a car- 

 bonate, and replaces the carbonic acid in it by sulphuric, nitric, acetic, 

 or other acids, so as to convert it into a sulphate, nitrate, or acetate. 

 He takes carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen from alcohol, and adds chlorine, 

 transmuting the spirit into chloroform. Such processes of substitution 

 are perhaps the most common of all the transformative methods of the 

 chemist, and they often imply complete exchange among all the elements 

 of very complex compounds. 



Fourthly and lastly : He can transform bodies, without taking ingre- 



