Sept. 1, 1864] THE TECHNOLOGIST. 



THE BASIS OF TECHNOLOGY. 83 



ways and steam-engines we are apt to think too lightly of our horses and 

 other beasts of burden, forgetting that without them we could not con- 

 struct the engines which to some extent are supplanting them, and that 

 they themselves are the best of engines for many purposes. James Watt 

 and George Stephenson, I am sure, respected even a donkey ; and were 

 the last of its race to die, we might all join Sterne in weeping over the 

 dead ass. We do not sufficiently remember that all other machines are 

 the offspring of living machines. A steam-engine is the literal as well 

 as the metaphorical embodiment of so much horse-power. A railway 

 viaduct is the petrifaction of so much animal force. A power-loom, 

 after its last improvement, remains still a hand-loom. Archaeologists 

 tell us, that in far separate regions of the world, you find stamped on the 

 monuments of forgotten races the impression in red of a human hand. 

 But we need not go to distant lands and the works of extinct races for 

 this mysterious signature. The mark of the red hand, red with the 

 blood which toil has wrung from it, will be found on every industrial 

 instrument and product, and the print of a horse's hoof is generally near 

 it. A horse's shoe, indeed, might be nailed np on many a door besides 

 the blacksmith's, to keep away the evil spirit of idleness, if we are afraid 

 of no other demon. 



It is only the sentient organism, the animal, that has motive and 

 transformative powers of the kind we have been considering ; and it is 

 only the paragon of animals that is able to direct them at will. But a 

 transmuting and metamorphosing power of another kind, and not less 

 important to industrial art, is common to plants and animals, and in 

 some respects characterises the former even more than the latter. The 

 plants and animals which as agriculturists we care for, may be regarded 

 as skilled labourers, who, in return for food, wages (which must be paid 

 in kind), and a certain liberty of action, agree to collect or manufacture 

 for us a multitude of useful substances. We employ them, and many 

 wild plants and animals also, as collectors or amassers of certain bodies, 

 because, although we could collect these ourselves, we conld not do it 

 half so well. We employ them as manufacturers, because they keep 

 their processes secret and have a monopoly of the manufacture. 



Look first at their skill as collectors. As soon as the seed we sow 

 has germinated, it begins to extract from the soil, or water and air 

 around it, various matters, among others the mineral alkali, potash. Now 

 this alkali is of great industrial value, and it is in our power to procure 

 it from the sources which yield it to plants. To procure this, however, 

 is a tedious, costly, and laborious process, for all the free alkali to be 

 found at any moment in a moderate weight of soil is exceedingly small, 

 and could not profitably be extracted by any artificial method. But a 

 growing plant day by day appropriates to itself an almost infinitesimal 

 amount of potash through its roots, and, like a miser, hoards it all, or 

 nearly all, so that if at the close of a season we burn it entire, we find in 

 the ashes all the gathered potash of the year harvested to our hands. 



