Physical Sciences. 



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has been simply the combining or utilizing of materials and results 

 wrought out as isolated products or facts, by long years of careful 

 investigation, by the patient truth-searchers in all portions of the 

 world. When these })ractical results are reached, the crowd will throw 

 up their hats and exclaim Great is science ! " and with the same 

 breath call that humbug which is preparing still greater successes for 

 the next generation. 



Let us interrogate the sciences or appeal to their history in proof of 

 our assertion. Whence came our telegraphs that now link the nations 

 together ? If you would answer that question, you must go back to 

 Franklin, to Galvani and Volta, to Ersted and Arago, to Grove and 

 Daniel, to Henry and Faraday, and their co-workers, men whose 

 names are seldom whispered in connection with the telegraph, but 

 whose labors in accumulating facts, discovering laws and inventing 

 instruments, made the electric telegraph a possibility in our day. It 

 was no telegraphic line, nor oceanic cable with its round dividends in 

 gold that urged them on, but love for nature's laws, the charm of 

 tracing this wonderful physical force — the lightning of the storm — 

 in all its manifestations. And thus through years of thought and 

 labor for the love of science alone, the conditions were preparing for 

 the wonder of the nineteenth century to spring as by magic into full 

 perfection . 



One practical thought seemed to do the work, as one spark calls out 

 the force that hurls the shot and shell ; but that practical thought 

 would probably never have existed except as a flight of fancy in some 

 tale of magic, or if it had existed as something desirable and possible 

 in real life, it would have been as barren of results as a grain of corn 

 on winter's snow, had it not been for the preparation made by those 

 who labored for the love of original investigation, paid only by the 

 discovery of nature's laws, without one thought of other gain. 



What shall we say of Chemistry, that worker of wonders, transform- 

 ing waste products into wealth and changing daily the conditions of 

 life by its new products and applications ? The old alchemists pro- 

 duced some meager results, indeed, while searching for the philoso- 

 pher's stone and the elixir of life. But for the origin of true Chemistry 

 we must look to that illustrious band of whom Black and Davy and 

 Lavoisier were the types — men who asked for nothing higher than to 

 unfold the laws of nature in the constitution of water, air and earth. 



The time has come, indeed, when Chemistry, like almost every other 

 physical science, is so full and complete in its facts and established 

 principles as to become truly deductive. Materials are so abundant 

 and methods of work so perfect, that practical life has but to suggest 

 its wants to have them supplied. But they are supplied, directly or 



