Sept. 1, 1864.] THE TECHNOLOGIST. 



THE BASIS OP TECHNOLOGY. 87 



these conditions would no more have produced them thaii the mating, 

 under certain restrictions, of particular vegetable or animal pairs would 

 have given us the grapes of Portugal or the race-horses of England. 



But whether we choose to call it creation or not, it is transformation 

 of a kind as important, industrially, as that which mechanics has 

 effected on many a machine. Ask a baker if he sets the same value on 

 samples of wheat differently derived and grown, and he will offer you 

 twice the sum for one that he will give for another. Ask a brewer the 

 same question regarding barley, and you will receive the same answer. 

 The sugar-planter carefully classifies his beet-roots or sugar-canes, the 

 perfumer his lavender and orange flowers, the wine maker his grapes, 

 the tea merchant his teas, the dye broker his indigos and madders, the 

 pharmacologist his poppies and cinchonas. The plants in which those 

 industrialists have an interest may, by variation in stock, in soil, lati- 

 tude, climate, mode of cultivation, degree of manuring, and the like, be 

 made abundant or deficient in starch, sugar, azotised nutritive prin- 

 ciples, mineral salts, odorous essences, colouring principles, and medi- 

 cinal or poisonous alkaloids. 



It is the same with animals. A cattle-dealer will give you one calf 

 which shall certainly in course of time prove a bountiful yielder of 

 milk and cream ; another which shall as certainly be a fatted ox when 

 three years old ; a third which shall by-and-by be a match for a horse 

 at the plough. 



A jockey may at first stun you with what seems his unintelligible 

 slang about blood, and bone, and wind, and bottom ; but by-and-by you 

 discover that these are his technical phrases for certain structural and 

 physiological peculiarities, which he can exalt or diminish in a par- 

 ticular animal by due selection of sire and dam, and fit treatment, and 

 training of foal ; so that if you are not very difficult to please, and, 

 moreover, are not in a very great hurry, he will contract to make you a 

 horse according to the pattern you select, as an engineer will to make 

 you a steam-engine. 



So also : The Yorkshire broadcloth-makers choose by preference 

 the long stapled wool of sheep fed plentifully upon artificial grasses, 

 turnips, and the like. The Welsli blanket-makers, on the other hand, 

 prefer the shorter wool of sheep cropping the natural grass of the hills, 

 whilst the Scotch tartan shawl-weavers work only with Australian or 

 Saxony wools. 



In like manner the comb-makers will tell you that the farmers are 

 injuring them, by multiplying breeds of cattle which quickly fatten, 

 and are, in consequence, killed before their horns are well grown ; and 

 those same industrialists will curiously distinguish between the tortoise- 

 shell from one region of the sea and that from another. 



I should never end, were I to pursue this matter. Let those illus- 

 trations suffice to show that living organisms are not only industrialists 

 like ourselves, and in many cases more skilful artists, but are also 



