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BULLETIN OF THE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 
ful for the provision and the care which had thus stored up so 
much for us that was useful and good. This kind of instruction 
seemed to render unnecessary any detailed information as to the 
objects themselves, and therefore it was a duty to master all the 
more quickly the mystery of the multiplication table. The same 
kind of instruction is probably given yet to many young people. 
It is not very long since I heard a preacher of some eminence — 
in another city, of course — descant in his sermon upon the Divine 
wisdom which had stored up in the womb of earth the coal which 
is now the source of so much useful power that it might be ready 
for man when man was ready to use it. Perhaps the remark was 
not an unreasonable one from a theological point of view, and it 
sounded well. The scientific man, however, could probably main- 
tain without much difficulty that the coal would be where it is 
if man had never come upon the earth to make use of it. The 
observation recalled to my mind the remark made by John 
Tyndall in one of his lectures thirty years ago. He was explain- 
ing to his audience the sources of motive power, and drawing 
comparisons between those substances whose atoms are still in 
action and those whose atoms have already closed in chemical 
union and are therefore dead. He named a number of these, 
and then said: “ In this way we might go over nearly the whole 
of the material of the earth’s crust, and satisfy ourselves that 
though they were sources of power in ages past, and long before 
any creature appeared on the earth capable of turning their power 
to account, they are sources of power no longer. And here,” he 
said, “ we might halt for a moment to remark on that tendency, 
so prevalent in the world, to regard everything as made for 
human use. Those who entertain this notion, hold, I think, an 
overweening opinion of their own importance in the system of 
nature. Flowers bloomed before men saw them, and the quantity 
of power wasted before man could utilize it is all but infinite 
compared with what now remains. We are truly heirs of all 
the ages ; but as honest men it behooves us to learn the extent of 
our inheritance, and as brave ones not to whimper if it should 
prove less than we had supposed.” 
The complaint — if you will call it a complaint — which I have 
made regarding what we teach the young in comparison with 
