IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 
21 
turbellarian worm, “ whose arrangement of muscles,” biolo- 
gists tell us, “ is far from economical or effective.” 
J. M. Tylor, Whence and W T hither of Man, Morse Lec- 
tures, 1895, N. Y., 1896, p. 47. In comparison, modern 
society may be likened to one of the higher mammalia, such 
as the tiger or the elephant, which cannot only take up from 
nature the maximum of energy, but can also apply it in 
varied movements and a highly complicated conduct. 
Consider the vast stores of energy which society has 
to-day at its disposal. The steam power of the United 
States alone equals the day labor of one hundred million 
men. Behind each man, woman and child of the nation 
stands more than an automaton of steel with the strength of 
a man, but with manifold his capacity for productive 
labor. In carding, for example, fingers of steel do in half 
an hour what the unaided workman of a century ago could 
not have accomplished in less than eight months. In 
machinery society finds a tireless hand capable of perform- 
ing the mightiest and the most delicate of tasks with equal 
ease. It strikes with the steam hammer a blow of 2,000 
tons, and it rules the Rowland grating with its 48,000 
parallel lines to the inch. 
Consider also the new induement of energy which 
science has bestowed upon society in the gift of electricity, 
a power capable of the swiftest and most ready transmis- 
sion, of infinite subdivision, and of the greatest known 
intensity of concentration. And how varied is its func- 
tioning! In mine and quarry it picks and drills and fires 
the blast. At the wharf it lifts and loads and carries. In 
the factory it forges, casts, welds and rivets. In the home 
it shines in the most healthful light yet made by man. In 
electrolysis it produces a hundred substances of value, 
such as the caustic alkalies, bleaching powder, chloroform, 
the chlorates, and aluminum, the metal perhaps to give 
name to the new century. From the refuse of the mine 
it extracts millions of dollars worth of the precious metals. 
It surfaces steel and iron with zinc, nickel or copper, with 
silver or gold, and copies infallibly the engraved plate of 
the map and the type set page. In the electric furnace it 
