ABSTRACT OF PROCEEDINGS. xv. 
The following is an abstract of the first Science Lecture 
of the present Session, delivered on the 28th May, by O. O. 
BURGE, m. mst. c.z., on ‘The Development of the Railway.” 
The introductory portion dealt with the three great epochs 
of civilisation—Christianity, the Renaissance, and Modern 
Scientific discovery, and the connection of the two latter 
through the instrumentality of francis Bacon, who might 
be regarded as the father of all modern scientific knowledge 
though knowing little about it himself. The spirit of 
inquiry, the induction method, the patient and systematic 
examination of facts, all the outcome of the Baconian 
philosophy, were indispensable to scientific progress. The 
development of railways, one of the most beneficient results: 
of this progress was shown to have chiefly led, in the moral 
world, to greater toleration of natural differences through 
greater knowledge, anda contrast was drawn between the 
contempt and hatred of foreigners existing in England in 
the pre-railway days, and the more cosmopolitan ideas of 
_the present time. The greater intercourse between the 
classes nowadays, caused by their meeting more constantly 
in railway travelling, on more or less equal terms, was also 
adverted to. Contrasts were then drawn between the 
conditions of travelling in 1700, 1800, and 1900, and the 
beginnings of the idea of the railway and the locomotive, 
in the 17th and 18th centuries, were traced. Solomon de 
Caus, a Frenchman, was shut up in a mad house in 1641, 
for proposing to propel a carriage by steam, and anecdotes 
were given such as that of a country clergyman in 1784, 
meeting an experimental engine on the highway, which 
had escaped from its inventor, and his terror at the sight 
of what he thought was Satan himself; and of Brunton 
who devised a steam locomotive with legs, which on trial 
blew up. Trevethick, whose retiring and irresolute tem- 
perament prevented his undoubted inventive genius from 
bearing proper fruit, was the first constructor of a practical 
