86 



THE ANIMAL AS A MACHINE. 



and without visible substitute when they shall have 

 been exhausted ; and civilization, the life of the race, 

 dependent upon our coal-beds, is only assured of 

 ultimate and, on the geologist's scale of time, early 

 extinction ; unless, indeed, again consulting nature 

 and studying the lessons of life, as we have so often 

 profitably done before, we can learn of new ways of 

 availing ourselves of existing forms of energy in 

 nature, or of enormously improving our methods and 

 reducing those wastes which are now so frightful, as 

 judged from the standpoint of both the engineer and 

 the man of science. Whether we can expect or even 

 hope to accompHsh the first of these tasks is extremely 

 doubtful, not to say absolutely improbable ; that we 

 may possibly succeed in the second may be less un- 

 likely. In any case, our only recourse is the same 

 method which has brought us all that we now possess : 

 scientific research and the study of nature's own 

 methods. 



28. What we are to Seek is, first, a method of 

 producing, directly or by modification of other ether- 

 vibrations, just that sort of ether -wave which we 

 require, in the form of heat, light, or electricity, of 

 exactly defined rate and amplitude of vibration ; 

 secondly, the complete transformation of either or all 

 forms into mechanical power, into dynamic " energy. 

 It is easy to say and usually is safe to assert that what 

 has been done may be again done ; what is accom- 

 pHshed to-day in nature may be, in a similar manner 

 or by parallel methods, performed by man. Nature 

 accomplishes many of the tasks that man is about 

 attempting, and has been holding up to him the 

 solution of his problems throughout the ages. It is 



