Sept. 1, 1864.] THE TECHNOLOGIST. 



THE BASIS OF TECHNOLOGY. 75 



enlargement made the modern explicit and intelligible bond between 

 astronomy and chemistry. They agree in being observational and 

 analytical, but differ inasmuch as, of the two, chemistry alone is synthe- 

 tical, synthetico-analytieal, and transformational. And although as a 

 science chemistry is not more essentially analytical than astronomy ; 

 all the sciences, as already urged, being, according to the limits of their 

 domain, equally analytical ; as an applied science, i.e., as an art, its 

 powers of analysis give it pre-eminence. In popular language, this 

 word " analysis " is understood to signify chemical analysis ; nor need 

 the analysts of the other sciences complain of this. It is the utilitarian 

 value of the material products of such analysis, not the fact or mode of 

 its performance, that chiefly leads to the appropriation by chemistry of 

 the term. The analysis by the telescope of the milky way into a 

 firmament of stars ; of nebulse into clusters of them ; of one evening 

 star into a Jupiter with four moons ; of another into a Saturn with 

 rings ; of a third into a double star, with each twin differently coloured, 

 are performances as wonderful as the analysis of water into oxygen and 

 hydrogen, or of vermilion into sulphur and mercury. But the moons 

 of Jupiter have no industrial applications, and the rings of Saturn do 

 not alter in market value ; the milky way has not become more 

 nourishing since the gods vanished from the sky ; nor is a double star 

 of more use than a single one. Microscopic analysis, anatomical analysis, 

 erystallographic analysis, yield results as curious and as important as 

 any yielded by chemical analysis, but they have little interest for the 

 industrialist. It matters not to the manufacturer of phosphorus what 

 the microscopic characters of a bone are, but a great deal what its 

 chemical composition is. It matters not to the farmer what the shapes 

 are of the fossil infusorise in the soil he tills, but a greet deal what the 

 chemical constituents of that soil are. It matters little to the gunpowder 

 maker what the crystalline forms of sulphur and saltpetre are, but he 

 attaches the greatest value to the question of their chemical purity. 



There is another reason why the word "analysis," unless qualified, 

 should be so generally understood to be chemical analysis. Chemistry, 

 alike as a science and an art, does not merely separate the complex 

 material wholes with which it deals into their simpler and simplest 

 ingredients, but completely detaches each of these from the rest, and 

 handles it apart. We do not merely know that water consists of 

 hydrogen and oxygen, but these themselves are ours, to examine as 

 minutely as we please. The solitary exception presented by the element 

 fluorine, which chemical science can logically analyse out of its com- 

 pounds, but which chemical art cannot concretely isolate and exhibit, 

 makes the contrast in all other cases the more remarkable. ' No doubt 

 our means of chemical analysis and isolation are very great, as geology, 

 mineralogy, anatomy, and physics generally illustrate. Their modes 

 of application, however, and their results, are less numerous, and far 

 less striking than those of chemical analysis. The mechanical part, for 



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