SCIENCE 
IS 
KNOWLEDGE. 
KNOWLEDGE 
IS 
POWER. 
J PRACTICAL JOURNAL OF 
HOME ARTS. 
Vol. IV. 
NEW YOEE, MAECH, 1881. 
No. 3. 
Great Workmen and Their Tools. 
E called attention 
in the first num- 
ber of the Young 
Scientist, to 
what might be 
done by " make- 
shift" appara- 
tus, and during 
the past few 
months, under 
the title of Sci- 
ence in Common 
Things," we 
have tried to show how very important 
truths might be illustrated by very simple 
appliances. The illustrations of these 
articles were first pubUshed in the French 
journal, La Nature, and they have been 
copied into several periodicals. But 
though we have borrowed the illustra- 
tions, the articles which accompany them 
in the Young Scientist are all original, 
and have been written specially with a 
view to the tastes and wants of our own 
readers. 
But while advocating so strongly the 
use of very simple apparatus for the pur- 
pose of illustrating scientific truth, we 
must caution our readers against apply- 
ing the same rule when they want to find 
out any of the great truths of nature. 
Great men, entering for the first time 
upon some special line of investigation, 
have made the most wonderful discoveries 
by means of the most simple tools. Thus, 
Ferguson, by means of a thread and a few 
small beads, was enabled to make a map 
of the stars ; and his wooden clock, con- 
structed out of coarse materials by means 
of a penknife, was certainly a wonderful 
performance. But his map was, after all, 
a poor affair compared with those that 
are now in use; and his wooden clock 
would hardly have served to run railway 
trains by. On the other hand, Newton, 
by means of a prism, a lens, and a dark 
room, unfolded the composition of light 
and the origin of color; Black's famous 
discovery of latent heat was made with a 
few thermometers and a pan of water; 
and Watt's first model of the condensing 
steam-engine was made out of an old 
anatomist's syringe, used for injecting 
bodies previous to dissection. But these 
are not safe examples for imitation. New- 
