Sept. 1, 1864.] THE TECHNOLOGIST. 



THE BASIS OP -TECHNOLOGY. 89 



and that all the tiny planets which have so rapidly been added to our 

 astronomical catalogues are probably as old as the sun, we cannot help 

 feeling as if Adams, Leverrier, Hinds, and their brethren, had just 

 planted those lights in the sky, and that midnight should be sensibly 

 less dark because of their addition to the heavens. I have taken these 

 illustrations from the most observational science, astronomy ; but any 

 other science would have yielded illustrations as striking. The 

 mastodons and megatheria of geology pass with us for creatures more 

 recent than the elephants and camels which were the largest quadrupeds 

 known to our fathers. Coal we think of as a newly invented, not aa 

 the oldest fuel ; aluminium we deliberately call a new metal, although 

 we know none older ; and gutta-percha is a new " gum." After all, 

 however, the naturalist is but a disinterrer, his tool is a spade, and his 

 newest things are generally Nature's oldest, and have taken longest to 

 find, because they were buried first and deepest. 



When we work as transformationalists we are like sculptors, not 

 evolving a pre-existent statue from a concealing mass, but bestowing a 

 statue on a block of marble. The hollow screw is Archimedes' screw ; 

 the condensing steam-engine, Watt's engine ; the railway locomotive, 

 Stephenson's locomotive ; the electric telegraph, Oersted's telegraph ; 

 the Crystal Palace, Fox and Paxton's palace. Yet as implied in what 

 has been already said, we treat discoverers as if they were inventors, 

 and to make amends we call inventors discoverers. And although, in 

 strictness of speech, it is inadmissible to speak of Watt, as accomplished 

 men are frequently found doing, as the discoverer of the steam-engine, 

 and only Sancho Panza thought of invoking blessings on the man who 

 first invented sleep, still the popular confusion between the discoverer 

 and the inventor shows how difficult it is to assign the one higher praise 

 than the other. It is better to decline answering, or to leave each 

 person to answer according to his taste, such questions as, Is the world 

 more indebted to Layard, who recovered Nineveh, or to Paxton, who 

 created the Sydenham Palace 1 Whether industrialism is more indebted 

 to the naturalist or to the experimentalist, is a problem best disposed of 

 by the logic of the child who, when asked whether he would have an 

 apple or an orange, held out each hand and replied he would have 

 both. 



