THE TECHNOLOGIST. [July 1, 1865. 



530 THE PROGRESS OF 



however, as still more striking that strange military proceeding, that 

 Coup d'Etat of the bees, when they put their hives under martial law, 

 and slaughter the drones. How the matter is managed, no one I 

 suppose exactly knows, but there is plainly perfect concert among the 

 slayers, and utter disconcert among the victims. What massacre of 

 St. Bartholomew, Indian mutiny or the like, can vie with this as an act 

 of effective, premeditated murder ! 



Such then are the leading motives to animal telegraphy, and we 

 share them to the full ; but our telegraphy cannot be understood, till, 

 in addition to hunger, love, and war, you have counted religion and 

 commerce among the motives which lead men to communicate with 

 their distant brethren. 



To religion I make but a passing reference, for this is neither the 

 place nor the time for dwelling on it ; but let me remind you, that from 

 the beginning no cause has been more operative in at once dividing and 

 uniting men. All history, sacred and profane, the legends of all 

 nations civilised and barbaric, abound in references to the mighty 

 influence which man's recognition of himself as an immortal, has had 

 upon his journeyings and his intercommunings. 



In whatever other aspects the children of Adam have differed from 

 him, they have all taken up the pilgrim's staff, and wandered through 

 the world, seeking the lost Eden which in this earth none of them has 

 found. Babylonian, Assyrian, Egyptian, Hebrew, Greek, Chinese, 

 Indian, African, European, American, all have gone to distant shrines, 

 to sacred temples, to spots favoured by the Divinities, to seek peace, to 

 offer thanksgivings, to propitiate wrath, to call down judgment on the 

 oppressor, to avenge the innocent, to punish the impious. Take the 

 Crusades, a neutral example of this, midway in time between the most 

 ancient and the most modern religious missions, half-Pagan, half- 

 Christian in character, and nearly barren of direct result, and consider 

 what an immense effect they nevertheless have had in quickening the 

 communication of ideas on all subjects between the Northern and 

 Southern, the Eastern and Western worlds. 



The other peculiarly human, supra-animal parent of the telegraph — 

 namely, commerce, is one on which I, as professor of industrial science, 

 have a peculiar call to dwell. But at present I would only urge, that 

 although the gigantic development of commerce which our eyes have 

 witnessed, was undreamed of by our fathers, it did as much in degree 

 for them as for us. 



To myself, indeed, few considerations are more striking than that 

 almost all the famous voyages of the world have been industrial in 

 character. They were warlike because they could not help being so, for 

 the Ark was the only memorable ship that sailed unarmed. They were 

 religious, for no nation, however strongly it believed that the devil 

 cheated Adam out of Paradise, gave Satan the credit of putting a spade 

 into the exile's hand, and bidding him earn his bread by the sweat of 



