“If the matter is considered in reference to general principles, there is no more curious power in the world than the right which people exercise by Will of legislating after they are dead and gone, without restraint and without appeal; and it is perhaps even more singular that they exercise this power without being subject to any formalities whatever except the presence of two witnesses. To sell a house or a field is a matter which requires care and inquiry, and the circumstances ensure a certain degree of notoriety. But property of any amount may be disposed of in any way that caprice may dictate by an instrument which may be executed under any circumstances, and kept in any custody. No one but the testator need know its contents, and he may, and often does, prepare it with the most wanton caprice, and leave it in the most absurd depository to take its chance of loss or discovery as it may happen. It is well worth consideration whether the unlimited power which the law of England confers of making whatever Wills a testator chooses ought not to be qualified by some special provisions as to the manner in which such wills should be made.”
If we reflect on the extreme feebleness of the natural means by the help of which so many great problems have been attacked and solved; if we consider that to obtain and measure the greater part of the quantities now forming the basis of astronomical computation, man has had greatly to improve the most delicate of his organs, to add immensely to the power of his eye; if we remark that it was not less requisite for him to discover methods adapted to measuring very long intervals of time, up to the precision of tenths of seconds; to combat against the most microscopic effects that constant variations of temperature produce in metals, and therefore in all instruments; to guard against the innumerable illusions that a cold or hot atmosphere, dry or humid, tranquil or agitated, impresses on the medium through which the observations have inevitably to be made; the feeble being resumes all his advantage: by the side of such wonderful labours of the mind, what signifies the weakness, the fragility of our body; what signify the dimensions of the planet, our residence, the grain of sand on which it has happened to us to appear for a few moments!—Arago.
The conquests of science over the realms of matter in our day would scarcely have affected Bacon with greater surprise than the change in what we may call the social position of science. There was a time, not so very far removed from his own, when scientific truth was worshipped, if at all, with closed doors and in muffled accents. Science, like religion, had her age of persecution and her “church in the catacombs;” she, too, had heroes, and martyrs, and confessors of her own, and won her way to popularity through an ordeal of shame and suffering, the history of which remains to be written. The philosopher of the Middle Ages shunned the haunts of men; his crucible was heated in some secret or underground chamber; his knowledge was a forbidden lore, and if it showed itself in the command of new powers, was ascribed, not to inspiration from on high, but to dealings with an agent which even modern credulity so often proclaims as the source of intellectual mastery. From these fiery trials science has emerged without even a scar upon her. Militant she still is, but she is also triumphant, and vies with the learning of “letters,” which was never branded with the like infamy, in the number and dignity of her votaries. The change which has come over her social status has reacted on her doctrines. There are no longer any “mysteries” of science; “problems,” and even “apparent contradictions,” remain, but mysteries, with everything else that savours of the occult and esoteric, are exploded, and not many difficulties are admitted.—Times.
Although Galileo only discovered the moons of Jupiter, we often and unconsciously think of him as if he had been their creator, and had first set them to play their untiring game of hide-and-seek round the stately planet; and so also in no irreverent spirit we call the laws which Kepler divined to regulate certain movements of the heavenly bodies, “Kepler’s Laws,” although he disclaimed the title, grandly affirming that God, whose laws they were, had waited some thousand years before one man, even Kepler, had discerned them. And so again, notwithstanding our conviction that the star Neptune has been shining in the sky since what we shall be content to call “the beginning,” and that all the tiny planets which have so rapidly been added to our astronomical catalogues are probably as old as the sun, we cannot help feeling as if Adams, Leverrier, Hind, and their brethren, had just planted those lights in the sky, and that midnight should be sensibly less dark because of their addition to the heavens.
When we work as transformationalists we are like sculptors, not evolving a pre-existent statue from a concealing mass, but bestowing a statue on a block of marble. The hollow screw is Archimedes’ screw; the condensing steam-engine, Watt’s engine; the railway locomotive, Stephenson’s locomotive; the electric telegraph, Oersted’s telegraph; the Crystal Palace, Fox and Paxton’s palace. Yet as implied in what has been already said, we treat discoverers as if they were inventors, and to make amends we call inventors discoverers. And although, in strictness of speech, it is inadmissible to speak of Watt, as accomplished men are frequently found doing, as the discoverer of the steam-engine, and only Sancho Panza thought of invoking blessings on the man who first invented sleep, still the popular confusion between the discoverer and the inventor shows how difficult it is to assign the one higher praise than the other.—Prof. George Wilson.
Roger Bacon, writing about the year 1260, that is, six hundred years ago, says:—“I call that Experimental Science which neglects argumentation; for the strongest arguments prove nothing as long as the conclusions are not verified by experience. Experimental science does not receive truth at the hands of superior sciences. It is itself mistress, and other sciences are its servants. It has, in truth, the right to command all sciences, since it alone certifies and sanctions their results. Experimental science is, therefore, the queen of sciences and the limit of all speculation.” The features in Bacon’s writings that have caused his name to be handed down as a founder of physical science are very obvious. He doubts wisely and has a profound reverence for facts. The theory of a vacuum has come to him on the highest authority, but its difficulties distress him. He speaks of experimental philosophy as more perfect than all the natural sciences; “for it teaches us to test by trial the noble conclusions of all the sciences, which, in the others, are either proved by logical arguments or are examined into on the imperfect evidence of nature; and this is its prerogative.”
“As a workman in the laboratory, and with lenses, he himself discovers the existence of explosive compounds, confirms the tradition of history as to the effect of burning glasses, and understands the principle of the camera. He points out the faultiness of Cæsar’s calendar. His views of the limits of medicine are excellent. ‘For, whereas a healthy rule of life depends upon what is eaten and drank, on the hours of sleep and waking, of exercise and rest, on climate and the temper of the mind, and that all these should be observed from childhood in the constitution they fit, scarcely any man cares to take thought of these things, nay, not even physicians, such at least as we have met with.’ Contrast this and his critical approval of the use of charms to delude credulous patients into health with the science ridiculed in the Malade Imaginaire, and the advantage will not be found on the side of the seventeenth century. But, even in physical science, Bacon’s splendid powers of generalization prevail over the habit of analysis, and he is rather a prophet than a teacher. He believes that the period of human life may be prolonged many years by a sound system of dietetics; and the averages of life in our own century confirm him. He believes that ‘engines of navigation may be made without oarsmen, so that the greatest river and sea-ships with only one man to steer them, may sail swifter than if they were fully manned. Moreover, chariots,’ he thinks, ‘may be made so as to be moved with incalculable force without any beast drawing them.’ ‘And such things might be made to infinity, as, for instance, bridges to traverse rivers without pillars or any buttress.’ He even knows a wise man who has determined to construct a flying machine; but Bacon’s tone on this subject is a little less confident. That he himself hoped for much that has since been proved impossible—for the art of increasing gold, and for the discovery of an elixir of life—cannot of course be questioned. Bacon summed up the science of his times, and the analogies which guided him in his estimate of the laws of motion could not teach him to anticipate by five hundred years the individuality of the elements, or to understand the texture of the human body. His error, after all, was chiefly that he believed in Thought as a conqueror, and expected to establish her kingdom on the ruins of the thrones of the visible world.”—Saturday Review.
In an able summary in the Times of the contents of Sir Henry Holland’s Essays on Scientific and other Subjects, we find the following suggestive passages:—“The sciences are so interlacing and coalescing that it would seem as if in a year or two we should only have one huge science embracing all; or, at least, what are now regarded as separate sciences should be considerably reduced in number. This is more or less implied in the controversy on the “Correlation of Forces.” The question is,—Are there really “Forces” in nature? Or should we not rather say that there is but one force appearing under different forms? Among these forces may be mentioned light. The undulatory theory of the transmission of light is as old as Huyghens, but its universal acceptance is an incident of our own day; and it is in our own day that radiant heat has been discovered to be subject to those great physical laws which are the basis of the undulatory theory. Here, then, we find in our time, within the last few years, that the three great sciences of optics, of acoustics, and of heat, reduce their principal facts to the same formula. Or again, take this science of optics in another relation. It has within the last few years proved itself to be the most delicate instrument of chemistry. By the aid of a little starch the chemist can detect the millionth part of iodine in solution. Mr. Faraday has found that a strong ruby tint is given to a fluid by a proportion of gold not exceeding the half-millionth part in weight. These are wonderful results of ordinary chemical analysis; but what are they in comparison with the results obtained through the analysis of the spectrum? By means of it chymists have been able to detect in a compound 1-70,000,000th part of a grain of lithium, and the 1-180,000,000th part of a grain of sodium, the metal of common salt. The method of the analysis is very simple. If a little sodium, for instance, be burnt in a flame, and during the process of this burning the rays be made to pass through a prism, then in a certain defined portion of the spectrum beyond there will appear a thin yellow line, so vivid that it will show even when the sodium has been reduced to the 1-180,000,000th part of a grain. By help of the same analysis we pass on to astronomy, and discover the chemistry of the sun, the moon, and the stars. In the photosphere, or luminous atmosphere surrounding the body of the sun, there has in this way been discovered no less than six known metals.
“In these few examples we indicate roughly but sufficiently the intimate connexion of the physical sciences, and the necessity which is imposed on the student in the present day to know all if he would understand one. It has been said that he who has seen but one work of ancient art has seen none, while he who has seen all has seen but one. We may say the same of science. To know one is to know none, and to know all is to know but one.”
Daily the conviction deepens among those who have studied the matter, that with a few exceptions all the physical powers which man wields as movers or transformers of matter are modifications of Sun-force. It was bestowed upon antediluvian plants, and they locked it up for a season in the woody tissue which it enabled them to weave, and afterwards time changed that into coal; and the steam-engine which we complacently call ours, and claim patents for, burns that coal into lever-force and steam-hammer power, and is in truth a sun-engine. And the plants of our own day receive as liberally from the sun, and condense his force into the charcoal which we extract from them, and expend in smelting metallic ores. With the smelted metals we make voltaic batteries, and magnets, and telegraph wires; and call the modified, sun-force electricity and magnetism, and say it is ours, and ask if we may not do what we like with our own.
And again, the plants we cultivate concentrate Sun-force in grass, hay, oats, wheat, and other fibres and grains, which seem only suitable to feed cattle and beasts of burden with. But by and by a Spanish bull-fighter is transfixed by this force, through the horns of a bull, and dies unaware of his classical fate, pierced to the heart by an arrow from Apollo the Sun-god’s bow. On English commons prizes are run for, by steeds which are truly coursers of the sun, for his force is swelling in their muscles and throbbing in their veins, and horse-power is but another name for sun-power. Nor is it otherwise with their riders; for they too have been fed upon light, and made strong with fruits and flesh which have been nourished by the sun. His heat warms their blood, his light shines in their eyes; they cannot deal a blow which is not a coup-de-soleil, a veritable sun-stroke; nor express a thought without help from him.
In grave earnestness, let me remind you, that as force cannot be annihilated any more than matter, but can only be changed in its mode of manifestation, so it appears beyond doubt that the force generated by the sun, and conveyed by his rays in the guise of heat, light, and chemical power, to the earth, is not extinguished there, but only changes its form. It apparently disappears when it falls upon plants, which never grow without it; but we cannot doubt that it is working in a new shape in their organs and tissues, and reappears in the heat and light which they give out when they are burned. This heat, which is sun-heat at second hand, we again seem to lose when we use plants as fuel in our boiler-furnaces; but it has only disguised itself, without loss of power, in the elasticity of the steam, and will again seem lost, when it is translated into the momentum of the heavy piston, and the whirling power of a million of wheels.
The second-hand heat of the sun appears equally lost when vegetable fuel is expended in reducing metals; but oxidize these metals in a galvanic battery, and it will reappear as chemical force, as electricity, as magnetism, as heat the most intense; and, in the electro-carbon light, will return almost to the condition of sunshine again.—Prof. George Wilson.
Sir William Armstrong maintains, as a half-truth, that Invention is the fruit of the circumstances that call for it almost more than of the mind from which it springs. In a sense it is true, as Sir William Armstrong says, that “the seeds of invention exist, as it were, in the air, ready to germinate whenever suitable conditions arise;” but it depends not the less on the genius of individual inventors to determine whether the germination shall happen in one century or the next. The history of the locomotive is itself the strongest argument against relying too much on these floating seeds of invention and favouring circumstances, and taking too little account of inventors. If the Killingworth brakesman had died in his youth, it is scarcely too much to say that we should probably not yet be travelling by steam. We owe it to George Stephenson’s keen insight and resolute temper that the locomotive was forced upon an unbelieving world, no one can say how long before circumstances would otherwise have called it into existence. The seed had been floating, it is true, and had been in a manner detected centuries before; but it remained without life, not because the occasion had not called it forth, but because the right man had not arisen.
The recklessness with which Patents are issued, and the dishonesty on the part of the State in selling the same article to two or more persons, and then coolly leaving them to litigation for the possession of it, cannot be too strongly reprehended. The common sense of the question is summed up by Dr. Percy, in these words: “I cordially subscribe,” says the Doctor, “to the opinions expressed by Mr. Grove, Q.C.—namely, that the real object of Patent Law was ‘to reward not trivial inventions, which stop the way to greater improvements, but substantial boons to the public; not changes such as any experimentalist makes a score a day in his laboratory, but substantial practical discoveries, developed into an available form.’”
The law with respect to Patents has been greatly simplified and improved by the statute 15 and 16 Vict. c. 83: the fees payable for a Patent have been reduced, and the payment of spread over several years. One Patent now suffices for the United Kingdom, and is no longer void, as formerly, for trifling inaccuracies in the Specification, as these may be now disclaimed.
Before quitting the subject of Patents it may, perhaps, be serviceable to call attention to the admirable Abridgments of Specifications now publishing by the Patent Commissioners. In a few minutes one can get exact information there which cannot otherwise be obtained in as many hours. These Abridgments are in the form of small 8vo volumes.
Hereafter we hope to see provided out of the revenues of the Patent-office, a public library and museum, to constitute a historical and educational institution for the benefit and instruction of the skilled workman of the kingdom. Exact models of machinery are to be exhibited in the subjects, showing the progressive steps of improvement.
James Watt was a highly accomplished theorist, on every point on which he worked; yet his name has been frequently cited, as a proof that theory could be dispensed with. And his career, when compared with that of Telford, will illustrate theory applied to practice, as distinguished from practice alone, however acute. It is impossible to contemplate the career of Telford without a feeling of high interest, created by the comparison of his apparently inadequate education with his startling successes. Looking at the individual himself, there is everything for his age to admire; and as long as his structures last, each of them is the monumentum, but not ære perennius. The time will come when his name shall be like that of the builder of the old London bridge, who was, no doubt, the Telford of the day,—a stimulus to his contemporaries, useful and honoured, but not the remembered of succeeding ages. On the other hand, the discoveries of Watt, though equally startling in what is called the practical point of view, have the mind of the discoverer impressed upon them, and have been, and must be, the guide of his successors, not merely to repetitions of what he did himself, but to the enlargement of ideas, and the conversion of principles into forms useful in art. Take away the honourable qualities which enabled the two men to outstrip their contemporaries, each in his line; qualities which are the properties of the individual minds, and consider what is left, namely their modes of proceeding: consider the effect of these two modes on men in general, and there is nothing in that of Telford which would raise a workman above a workman; while in that of Watt there is the vital principle to which we owe all the mechanical triumphs of civilization, and all the theoretical successes of philosophy.—Penny Cyclopædia.
It seems impossible to exclude from a review, however slight, of contemporary progress in the exact Sciences, the advantages which have accrued to them, both directly, and as it were reflexively, by the astonishing progress of the Mechanical Arts. The causes, indeed, which called them forth are somewhat different from those which are active in more abstract, though scarcely more difficult, studies. Increasing national wealth, numbers, and enterprise, are stimulants unlike the laurels, or even the gold medals, of academies, and the quiet applause of a few studious men. But the result is not less real, and the advance of knowledge scarcely more indirect. The masterpieces of civil engineering—the steam-engine, the locomotive-engine, and the tubular bridge—are only experiments on the powers of nature on a gigantic scale, and are not to be compassed without inductive skill, as remarkable and as truly philosophic as any effort which the man of science exerts, save only the origination of great theories, of which one or two in a hundred years may be considered as a liberal allowance. Whilst, then, we claim for Watt a place amongst the eminent contributors to the progress of science in the eighteenth century, we must reserve a similar claim for the Stephensons and the Brunels of the present; and whilst we are proud of the changes wrought by the increase of knowledge during the last twenty-five years on the face of society, we must recollect that these very changes, and the inventions which have occasioned them, have stamped perhaps the most characteristic feature—its intense practicalness—on the science itself of the same period.
It has long been the fashion of one party to lament “the Decline of Science” in England; whilst another section has gravely declared that Science in this country is but the growth of yesterday, having been imported from Germany, and tenderly nurtured by the magnates of the realm. In the House of Commons, in the Session of 1863, a member stood up, and, with exultation, announced that Science had at length found its way into that democratic assembly through the individual exertions and influence of one now no more. From the language which this scion of a great house employed it might be inferred that Science had been previously almost unknown in England. The member, no doubt, spoke according to his knowledge; but it possibly escaped his memory that a man named Isaac Newton once existed. Without justly exposing ourselves to the charge of presumption, we might also boast of a few other names of distinction among the dead as well as the living.
There is another point upon which the public appear to be much misinformed—namely, that Science is in the receipt of large sums from the State. The annual amount voted out of the taxes for Science and Art is unquestionably large; but it should be borne in mind that, comparatively, only a small portion is really devoted to Science, while Art takes the lion’s share. Let it be so by all means. True Science to be worth anything must never become the creature of State bounty. We want no Institute with its salaried members and its eternal jobbing. We need no patronizing Mecænas, whether from the high-born or the self-exalted. What Science earnestly desires is to be let alone, that she may follow her destined course quietly, modestly, and without molestation. She especially loathes the Pythonic embrace of meddlesome persons who, knowing nothing of her, yet profess an intimate acquaintance with her and a tender regard for her welfare, solely with the object of puffing themselves into notoriety. She disdains them utterly.—Times journal.
We hear much, too, of “Science and Art” now-a-days coupled together, as if the strongest affinity existed between them; although no two things can be more unlike each other. The Arctic Circle and the Torrid Zone cannot be wider apart or in stronger contrast; for Science is frigidly logical, and Art hotly emotional.
It has been proved by experiment, that the rapidity at the bottom of a stream is everywhere less than in any part above it, and is greatest at the surface. Also, that in the middle of the stream the particles at the top move swifter than those at the sides. This slowness of the lowest and side currents is produced by friction, and when the rapidity is sufficiently great, the soil composing the sides and bottom gives way. If the water flows at the rate of three inches per second, it will tear up fine clay; six inches per second, fine sand; twelve inches per second, fine gravel; and three feet per second, stones of the size of an egg.—Lyell’s Geology.
Of late years experimental philosophers have been occupied with the investigation of a profound problem. Formerly, the most brilliant phenomena of nature were attributed to the existence of imponderable fluids. But the Correlation of heat, light, electricity, magnetism, and chemical affinity, as varying manifestations of force, attributable to modifications of motion in matter, now employs our subtlest thinkers—Faraday and Grove, Wheatstone and De la Rive. These researches extend even to the confines of the moral phenomena. The chemistry of nature differs from that of the laboratory, and the difference has been attributed, not simply to organization, but to the vital force—a power found only in living organisms. Yet, at length, the laboratory of Hoffman imitates the processes of nature, especially in plants, and produces some of the most delicate of the perfumes of flowers and fruits, and even seems on the very verge of the manufacture of some of its greatest treasures—such as quinine. Some are staggered by the steady march of scientific research into the most sacred sanctuaries of life, and recoil from investigations which trace the growth of the cell in the ovary into the perfect man; as though mystery were essential to faith; or, if it were so, as though there is the slightest risk that in ages to come man will have so stolen the sacred fruit that no mystery will remain to be solved.—Sir James Kay Shuttleworth on Public Education.
It was thought that this old idea had been completely disproved by experiment; but, according to the Saturday Review, the very contrary has been the result of recent experiments, in course of which, at all events, waves on a pond, generated by the wind, were completely stilled to a “glassy smoothness” by means of a film of oil scarcely more than the 7,000,000th part of an inch in thickness, and exhibiting the most brilliant zones of iridescent colours from its extreme thinness. The modus operandi is believed to consist simply in the wind ceasing to have a hold upon the water by the intervention of the oil, which slips along the surface with the wind, so that the oil must be applied to windward, and it moves to leeward, smoothing the surface as it goes!
Of all errors upon the formation of beings, the most absurd is Spontaneous Generation. Yet it is one of the most popular. If this theory is admissible for inferior beings, such as intestinal worms, infusoria, or polypi, why not for superior beings? The difficulty becomes an impossibility in both cases. Can it be imagined that an organized body, of which all the parts are intimately connected, with an admirably contrived correlation, so full of profound wisdom, is produced by a blind assemblage of physical elements? The organized body must have derived its existence from elements of which it was destitute! Then motion might proceed from inertia, sensibility from insensibility, life from death!
In Mr. Ross’ translation of Dr. Tschudi’s Travels in Peru, 1847, we are informed that the correct orthography is Huanu, and not Guano. He states that it is a term in the Quichua dialect, meaning “animal dung.” As the word is now generally used it is an abbreviation of Pishu Huanu, bird dung. “The Spaniards,” he says, “have converted the final syllable nu into no The European orthography Guano, followed also in Spanish America, is quite erroneous, for the Quichua language is deficient in the letter G, as it is in several other consonants. The H, in the common formation of the word, is strongly aspirated, whence the error of the orthography of the Spaniards, who have sadly corrupted the language of the Autochthones of Peru.”
Perspective is the science which furnishes us with the laws by which we can give the apparent, as geometry those by which we can give the real, forms of objects. These laws are obvious without rules to thoughtful, artistic common-sense—but, to many, books on the subject will always be useful, if not indispensable. The science was called perspective, or seeing through, from an impression that the correct foreshortening of objects could be gained by viewing and tracing them through a pane of glass. This plan only ensures correctness when the plane of the eye is parallel to that of the medium upon which the drawing is made. A picture in perspective is simply a plane parallel to the plane of the eye intersecting the rays that come from the surface of the objects represented. The points of these rays at the places of their several intersections combine to form the true perspective representation. This was the art that Mantegna made so much of at Padua; and that with which Bellini, the painter of the National Gallery “Doge,” delighted the Venetians. Without much semi-scientific pedantry, the whole science may be understood by balancing a half-crown on the top of the forefinger of your right hand. Hold it up so that its broad plane is parallel to the eye’s plane; put it nearer or further, and it seems to increase or diminish in size. Turn it obliquely, and it appears an oval; put the edge on a line with the eye, and it appears a mere thin straight line. A sphere is the only geometric form that undergoes no perspective changes. The eye is able to take in any given space set at an angle of under sixty degrees. When both eyes view a scene, instead of the circle one eye sees, we have an ellipse formed by the continuation of the two circles of vision,—the point of sight being opposite the centre of the space between the two eyes. Perspective is of great use in Art; but the books upon it are too abstruse, and imply a knowledge of mathematics. [This common-sense explanation is from the pen of Professor Wallace, M.A., in the first number of a journal edited by him and entitled The Public Instructor.]
Till the discovery of the Stereoscope, naturalists were puzzled to account for a single image resulting from double vision; and Gall and Spurzheim endeavoured to explain it by the supposition that one eye only was active at a time, the other only admitting light, and that Nature had given us two merely to provide against the accidental loss of one.—Leslie’s Handbook.
The danger from Lenses, when the heat of the sun is powerful, is well known. As an illustration, we may relate an instance which occurred on the premises of Messrs. Negretti and Zambra, philosophical instrument makers, in Hatton Garden. There was a smell of fire, but it could nowhere be detected, until a person entered the shop from the street with the startling information that the window was on fire, and such was really the fact: a large reading-lens hanging in the window exposed to the sun, its focus happening to be just within range of the woodwork of the window fittings, set fire to them, and no doubt in a very few seconds some serious damage would have been caused. Is it not possible that in tropical climates, when vessels are becalmed, they may be set on fire by the eye-deck lights everywhere observable on ships’ decks; or, nearer home, in warehouses, &c., where such means of lighting is resorted to? The matter merits serious consideration and should serve as a caution.
In the proper use of Spectacles there is no circumstance of more importance than their position on the head. They should be worn so that the glasses may come as close to the eye as possible without touching the eyelashes; they must also be placed so that the glasses may be parallel to the paper when held in an easy position. To accomplish this, let the sides of the spectacles bear upon the swell of the head, about midway between the top of it and the ear; the eyes will then look directly through the glasses to the paper, and make the most advantageous use of them, instead of looking obliquely through them to the paper, as in numerous cases, where persons place the sides of their spectacles in contact with, or very near, their ears—in which position they produce a distorted image on the retina. The sides of the spectacles should also be placed at an equal height upon the head; and the hands being applied to the points of the sides, will generally direct their equal height, as well as allow of their opening to the full extent without injury.—Adams on the Human Eye.
Although the thoughts of men have been turned to the mineral conditions of these islands for more than two thousand years; and in that period the art of Mining has improved; and the engineering appliances which have been brought to bear upon the ventilation and the draining of mines, are fine examples of mechanical ingenuity,—the science of Mining, however, can scarcely be said to have, as yet, any existence. In 1856, Mr. John Taylor, who must be regarded as a good authority, stated before a Committee of the House of Commons, “That there were no greater facilities for ascertaining the productive character of a mine now than formerly. The difference was simply in improved machinery. Our knowledge was not greater than that of our forefathers.” Whatever was said in 1856, is true at the present moment.
The psychological influences of subterranean toil form a strange but interesting subject of study. These and the effects of that continued uncertainty as to the reward which labours of the severest kind are to receive, are distinguishingly marked on every miner. In occult powers they are believers; and when, about a century since, the “Divining Rod” was introduced into Cornwall as a means for finding mineral lodes, it was eagerly seized upon; and, to the present day, several families are supposed to possess remarkable powers as diviners, or, as they are commonly called, “dowsers.”
Mr. Rawlinson observes that the existence of “diviners,” or “dowsers,” for finding out the mineral lodes was a serious reflection upon the present age; yet it was a curious fact, that a French adventurer, who was supposed to have been successful in finding water-beds in Africa, was introduced to the Government during the Crimean war, and was sent out to trace, by the divining-rod, water in that locality.
The most elementary laws of science are still a book sealed to the large majority of miners, and while they are, of all men, themselves the most theoretical, they always meet any attempt to explain phenomena upon the evidences of inductive research, by pronouncing the explanation to be a “theory,” which is of no value to a “practical.”
Mr. Wallace, himself a miner, says: “The impossibility of arriving at any knowledge of practical value respecting ore deposits in veins, is avowed by those who, with singular inconsistency, attach the greatest importance to individual experience. Even some occupying high distinction as directors or proprietors of mines, affirm, without qualification, that it is impossible to see through solid rocks.”
It must be admitted that amongst the miners there is an entire absence of any method by which a knowledge may be obtained of the causes leading to the production of mineral deposits; while the speculations of those philosophers who will not endure the toil of subterranean investigations are wild, and are consequently valueless.
The natural consequence of this imperfect knowledge is, that all mining speculations are necessarily attended with much uncertainty. From time to time a most productive mine is discovered. The Devon Great Consols, first known as Huel Maria, has paid 826l. dividends upon every share, one pound only being paid for shares now worth 490l. each. Upon the shares of South Caradoc, near Liskeard, the trifling sum of 25s. only was ever paid; the price of these shares, in 1862, was 390l.; and 391l. profit had been paid on every share.
There are other examples of great success in mining. Such results as these are laid hold of by designing men, and used to bait the hooks by which those who are in a hurry to be rich are caught. Permission to search for minerals is obtained from the possessor of the land near to some productive mine. A few trials are probably made, and then comes the formation of a company to work “Huel Chance” (or some more attractive name is adopted), through which the lodes from the fortunate neighbour are shown, by the aid of a parallel ruler, to run.
Mr. Rawlinson states, with regard to the pecuniary losses incurred in mining speculations, that some years ago, whilst holding an official inquiry in Cornwall, he was brought into connexion with several of the large mining adventurers of that district; and they stated it as their opinion that, if the value of all the ore mines in Cornwall, and the cost of working them were compared, the statement would stand as something like 25s. paid for every pound’s worth of ore obtained.
Statistics show that about 350,000 persons are employed in the production of minerals, to the value of nearly 35 millions per annum, which gives, as the production of each miner, not more than 2l. per week, an amount so small that we can hardly conceive it possible that it would remunerate the large capital which is invested in these mines.—See Mr. Robert Hunt’s valuable Report, 1862.
Professor Tennant states there have been already described 500 minerals, more than half which number are found in the British Isles; whilst more than 450 are found in our colonies. In the International Exhibition of 1862, our vast colonial mineral wealth was shown in remarkable specimens of gold, silver, copper, precious stones, &c., many of which had been found by working miners who had been sent out from this country. Yet, miners are generally ignorant of the value of minerals, which they reject as not worth collection: now, the gold they collect is worth 4l. per ounce; but rough stones are often rejected, which are worth 50l. per ounce, and some 500l. per ounce—they are diamonds. Mr. Tennant believes that, in many of our colonies, these minerals are thrown away, whereas a little knowledge of the use of the blowpipe would enable miners to distinguish one substance from another.
Professor Morris describes the carboniferous series of rocks in England which contain Coal as deposited above the old red sandstone, or what have been called the Devonian rocks, and several thousand feet in thickness, though the coal measures are of much more limited depth, and the mines of coal vary from thirty feet to only two inches thick. The distribution of Coal in England is much greater than in any country in Europe; though in the United States of America, near Pittsburg, the beds of coal extend over a vast area, and one is of great thickness. The quantity of coal that is raised from the pits in this country, however, exceeds that from all the other coal-fields in the world.[14] The probable duration of coal in England has formed an interesting subject of speculation with some geologists, who have estimated the period variously at from 300 to 1000 years. Sir William Armstrong, at the Meeting of the British Association, in 1863, estimated the minimum period of the northern coal-field at 200 years; but Mr. N. Wood, the great coal-viewer of the North, is of opinion that of the northern coal-field no conjecture, of practical utility, can yet be formed, as more than one half of the basin, lying under the sea, has not yet been explored.
Sir William Armstrong’s remark, however, was misunderstood, and thought to refer to the coal supply of the whole kingdom, whereas he limited the remark to the coal-field of Durham and Northumberland. This misapprehension re-opened the question of the exhaustion of our coal resources, and led to the communication of some valuable evidence to the Times journal. Thus, Mr. E. Hull, of the Geological Survey, states as the result of a series of investigations of the British coal-fields, that adopting the limit of depth at 4000 feet, he found there to be enough workable coal, at the rate of consumption for that year, (about 71,000,000 tons,) for nearly 1000 years; and even if the consumption should ultimately reach 100,000,000 of tons, that supply could be maintained for 700 or 800 years.
With respect to the assumed depth, 4000 feet, Mr. Hull adds:
“Already a depth of nearly 1000 yards has been reached in a Belgian colliery, and coal is now being extracted from depths of 700 and 800 yards in Lancashire. Even with the vertical limit of 4000 feet, I have since found reason to believe that the estimate I arrived at in the case of the South Wales coal-field was rather under than over the truth. In that coal-basin alone, with an area of 906 square miles, I calculated that the rate of consumption for 1859, of 9½ millions of tons, could be maintained for 1600 years; but it is only right to state, that Mr. H. Vivian, M.P., in a pamphlet published by him in 1861, controverts this view, and arrives at the conclusion that ‘South Wales could supply all England with coal for 500 years, and her own consumption for 5000.’
“As regards the absolute quantity of mineral fuel in this island, it may be considered as practically inexhaustible. The seams of coal outcrop in our coal-fields, and descend under the Permian and Triassic formations to depths exceeding 10,000 feet. The question of the available supply is therefore one depending on the rapidity of production and the limit of depth.”
Dr. Buckland, in 1841, dwelt upon the wanton waste of coal at the pits, which, in 1836, he had maintained would finally “exhaust the Newcastle coal-field at a period earlier by at least one-third than that to which it would last if wisely economized.” The waste has, however, been much abated.
Mr. Robert Hunt, however, maintains the consumption to be greatly understated. He says:
“All calculations on the probable duration of our coal-fields have been founded on the very erroneous data which supposes that not more than 36,000,000 of coals are raised annually. We know that more than sixty-six millions of coals are now annually produced, and the demands upon our resources are rapidly increasing.”
Sir William Amstrong himself quotes Mr. Hunt as showing “that at the end of 1861 the quantity of coal raised in the United Kingdom had reached the enormous total of eighty-six millions of tons, and that the average annual increase of the eight preceding years amounted to 2¾ millions of tons.”
If, therefore, Dr. Buckland’s remarks were important in 1836 (when his Bridgewater Treatise was first published), and of “greater force” in 1858, how much more must they be worthy of most serious consideration in 1863.—Communication to the Times by Mr. Frank Buckland. Another Correspondent, however, adds this consolation: