Waste. 
1883.] 
383 
lation. The miser of the old school, who buried his gold 
beneath the floor of his house, is pronounced a bad econo- 
mist : had he, instead, invested it judiciously he might have 
become a much wealthier man. The faCt that sooner or 
later the hoard is discovered and utilised does not cancel his 
error. Just in the same manner Nature has withdrawn 
from circulation a considerable part of her capital, and has 
kept it in such a state as to take no part in the transforma- 
tions on which animal and vegetable life depend. The 
coal-beds, carboniferous and oily shales, &c., consist of the 
relics of vegetation which have been locked up for thousands 
of years in an inactive condition. We refer here not to the 
carbon and the hydrocarbons present, since carbon and hy- 
drogen are elements so abundant that Nature has small 
cause to practise thrift as far as they are concerned. But 
coal, lignite, and their kindred minerals contain nitrogen in 
the combined state, sometimes in proportions exceeding 
1 per cent. All this combined nitrogen, which in an article 
so plentiful as coal amounts to a prodigious quantity, has 
been for unknown ages rendered practically non-existent. 
But it will be contended, in reply, man has, during the 
last few centuries, found these deposits, and is utilising 
them ! True ; just as the treasure-seeker sometimes finds 
the buried hoard of the miser or the pirate, and brings it 
more or less rationally into use. The discovery may be 
exceedingly convenient to such treasure-seeker, yet none 
the less the miser or the pirate was a . bad economist. Why 
should Nature be judged differently. 
We turn again in a totally different direction. Suppose 
that there exist a number of different machines or appliances 
whatsoever for executing one and the same task. Suppose, 
further, that these contrivances differ much among them- 
selves in their relative degree of excellence and efficiency. 
We may take, for example, the boomerang, the sling, the 
bow, the match-lock, the flint-lock, the muzzle-loading rifle, 
and the breech-loader. Or, as another instance, let us 
compare, as means of transporting merchandise, the pack- 
horse, the stage-waggon, and the goods-train. If a manu- 
facturer employed, and continued to employ, all these three 
kinds of conveyance for transporting the same kind of goods 
to the same place, he would not unjustly be pronounced a 
bad economist. Yet this is precisely what Nature does. 
We find her employing a number of different agents to effect 
some one purpose, and she even gives a preference to those 
which work in the least satisfactory manner. Thus we see 
the removal of putrescent and excrementitious matter 
