RELATION OE SCIENCE TO ELECTRO-PLATE MANUFACTURES. 329 
It is true tliat many tilings which have appeared very 
promising in theory or in experiment have failed altogether in 
practice, but why is this ? It is not that the principles of nature 
existed in the one case, and did not exist in the other, but that 
we have imperfectly understood them ; that from some unfore- 
seen circumstances we have been unable to apply them, or that 
we have indolently abandoned them without sufficient or proper 
trial. 
In many cases we are unable to obtain the same conditions 
of success upon the large scale that we have upon the small 
scale ; if we melt some brass in a crucible, and cover it with a 
layer of borax, and dip a piece of perfectly clean iron into it, 
the iron will receive an adhesive metallic coating ; but if we 
attempt to coat very bulky articles, such as sheets of iron, by 
this process we fail, because no vessel will withstand the heat 
and great weight of the melted metal. 
In other cases a process fails because of its too great expense ; 
many attempts have been made to supersede steam as a motive 
power by means of electro-magnetism, and engines driven by 
that force have been constructed of five or ten-horse power ; 
but the cost of driving them has been found to be at least ten 
times the amount of that of a steam-engine of equal strength. 
And in other cases we fail because we attempt at once to 
carry out upon a large scale that which has only been the 
subject of a small experiment, instead of enlarging the process 
by small degrees, and adapting the apparatus, the materials, 
and its treatment, to- the size of the operation. 
That which appears very simple in the hands of an experi- 
mentalist almost invariably becomes much more complex when 
cai’ried into practice in a manufactory, simply because there is 
then a greater number of conditions to be fulfilled. Electro- 
plating a piece of steel with silver is to a chemist a very simple 
matter, because it is of no importance to him whether the silver 
adheres firmly, is of a good colour, or is deposited at a certain 
cost ; but with a manufacturer, unless all these conditions are 
fulfilled, the process is a failure. 
No towns have perhaps benefited more by scientific dis- 
covery and its application to trade, than Birmingham and 
Sheffield, — the former in particular. The great bulk of the 
articles manufactured there being composed of metal, are 
produced and ornamented by mechanical and chemical pro- 
cesses, and therefore offer peculiar advantages for the applica- 
tion of mechanical and chemical knowledge. 
Many manufacturers seem to think that because their 
operations are so completely routine, and have been handed 
down to them by their predecessors in nearly their present 
state, they are not at all indebted to science ; but there is no 
