Sept. 1, 1864.] THE TECHNOLOGIST. 



THE BASIS OF TECHNOLOGY. 81 



not afraid to calculate the horse-power, immense though it is, which lies 

 in the bend of each of their little fingers. 



The chemical forces are like supple Eastern jugglers, with swarthy- 

 brows and lustrous, unfathomable eyes, who never look you straight in 

 the face, or measure glances with you. They are robed in gauze, which 

 seems transparent like glass ; but when you try you can see nothing 

 through it. The instruments in their girdles are like children's play- 

 things ; and the lighted lamp, which they always keep near them, has 

 nothing to distinguish it from ordinary lamps. You may be indifferent 

 when they stretch forth their slender arms, and ask you for the stone 

 beneath your feet ; but you are startled when, after some sleight-of- 

 hand, you receive in its stead a steel blade or a sphere of crystal ; and 

 you tremble when you see the cunning fingers close for one moment 

 over a little harmless charcoal and water, and open the next to offer you 

 the deadliest poison. These subtle conjurors, secret as the grave, have 

 we know not what of angelic, what of demonic, power at their com- 

 mand ; and we are continually tempted to put a higher value upon their 

 mysterious legerdemain than upon the open handiwork of the mecha- 

 nical powers. In so far, however, as the artificial modification of matter 

 is concerned, we almost invariably require the services of both, and 

 they work willingly together. It may be well to have one word, as 

 transmutation, to indicate chemical molecular change, and another, as 

 transformation, to indicate mechanical molecular change ; but, as indus- 

 trialists, we must hesitate to marvel more at the one than the other. 

 How cheerfully they labour to a common end, like twin brother and 

 sister ; the one strong by measurable strength, the other by immeasur- 

 able fascinating power, we see in the case of that great world-changer, 

 that emblem of war and minister of peace, gunpowder. It needs the 

 strong brother to fell the oaks, and with a hint from his twin sister to burn 

 them into charcoal. It needs his stout arms to quarry the sulphur, and 

 bring the saltpetre from India ; to crush them into grains, and grind 

 them together ; but it also needs his weird sister, in whose palm he 

 lays the innocent dust, to breathe upon it before the Alps are tunnelled, 

 or Sebastopol lies in ruins. 



It is not necessary, after the division I have made, to make special 

 reference to heat, light, electricity, and magnetism as sciences of trans- 

 muting and transforming force, since, without deciding on the essential 

 nature of the agencies which they represent, we may, as industrialists, 

 divide them between mechanics and chemistry. Thus heat may be 

 equally partitioned between them, as alike remarkable for mechanical 

 and chemical alterative power. Electricity and light may be given in 

 larger part to chemistry, and magnetism in larger part to mechanics. On 

 the other hand, also, mineralogy, as a lesser geology, may be ranked 

 along with it. 



We may suppose all the sciences related to industrialism arranged in 

 the form of a crescent. At the tip of the one horn stands astronomy, 



