4 C. 0. BURGE. 



many ignorant men relied on their native wit, and practical 

 experience, to achieve results which, though wonderful, as 

 operations in the dark, would have been so much better, if 

 their earlier training had led them to ask for the illumin- 

 ating aid of science. 



Many a laborious scientific investigation of the present 

 day, is looked upon as only abstractedly interesting, and 

 of no practical advantage outside the walls of an institution 

 like this in which we meet, and it is thought that money 

 spent upon it is taken from some more practical immediate 

 use. So said the so-called practical men of 300 years ago. 

 Now we know how grievously they were mistaken, and how 

 the Merry Monarch, who is said to have never said a foolish 

 thing, nor done a wise one, certainly did a wise thing, in 

 founding our great parent, the Royal Society of London, 

 to which is due so much of the practical science of the last 

 two centuries. 



The Elizabethan mechanics knew not of their great con- 

 temporary Napier of Merchistoun, who, by his invention 

 of logarithms, has so greatly lightened the labours, not only 

 of the astronomer and through him, the navigation of the 

 world, but also those of the engineering designer. Indeed 

 without Napier's aid, the vast work of these callings, at 

 the present day, would be impossible. Though hinted at 

 by an earlier German writer, Michael StifeLius, this inven- 

 tion of the 17th century was undoubtedly one of the greatest 

 intellectual feats of the human mind, and it is remarkable 

 in having issued complete, like the birth of Pallas Athene, 

 ready armed and equipped, from the author's brain, and it 

 has not received any material improvement since. Nor 

 were the mechanics and millwrights of succeeding gener- 

 ations more aware of the scientific achievements, affecting 

 their work, of Kepler, Galileo, Oavalieri, Harriott, Descartes, 

 Newton and others, in conic sections, algebra and mensur- 



