The arts by which man defends and maintains himself, and holds rule over the world he lives in, depend so much on his use of instruments, that it will be well to begin with some account of tools and weapons, tracing them from their earliest and rudest forms.

Man is sometimes called, to distinguish him from all lower creatures, the “tool-using animal.” This distinction holds good in a general way, marking off man with his spear and hatchet from the bull goring with his horns, or the beaver carpentering with his teeth. But it is instructive to see how plainly the ape tribes, coming nearest to ourselves in having hands, have also rudiments of the implement-using faculty. Untaught by man, they defend themselves with missiles, as when orangs in the durian trees furiously pelt passers-by with the thorny fruit. The chimpanzee in the forests is said to crack nuts with a stone, as in our Zoological Gardens monkeys are often taught to do by the keepers, where they take readily to the use of these and more difficult implements, as soon as the thought has been put into their minds.

The lowest order of implements are those which nature provides ready-made, or wanting just a finish; such are pebbles for slinging or hammering, sharp stone splinters to cut or scrape with, branches for clubs and spears, thorns or teeth to pierce with. These of course are oftenest found in use among savages, yet they sometimes last on in the civilized world, as when we catch up any stick to kill a rat or snake with, or when in the south of France women shell the almonds with a smooth pebble, much as the apes at Regent’s Park would do. The higher implements used by mankind are often plainly improvements on some natural object, but they are adapted by art in ways that beasts have no notion of, so that it is a better definition of man to call him the “tool-maker” than the “tool-user.” Looking at the various sorts of implements, we see that they were not invented all at once by sudden flashes of genius, but evolved, or one might almost say grown, by small successive changes. It will be noticed also that the instrument which at first did roughly several kinds of work, afterwards varied off in different ways to suit each particular purpose, so as to give rise to several different instruments. A Zulu seen at work scraping the stick that is to be the shaft of his assegai, with the very iron head that is to be fixed on it, may give an idea what early tool-making was like, before men clearly understood that the pattern of instrument suitable for a lance-head was not the best for cutting and scraping. We should be horrified at the thought of the blacksmith pulling out one of our teeth with his pincers, as our forefathers would have let him do; the forceps we expect the dentist to use is indeed a variety of the smith’s tool, but it is a special variety for a special purpose. Thus in the history of instruments, the tools of the mechanic cannot well be kept separate from the weapons of the hunter or soldier, for in several cases it will be seen that both tool and weapon had their origin in some earlier instrument that served alike to break skulls and cocoa-nuts, or to hack at the limbs of trees and of men.

Among the simplest of weapons is the thick stick or cudgel, which when heavier or knobbed passes into the club. Rude champions have delighted in the ferocious roughness of such a gnarled club as Herkules in the pictures carries on his shoulder, while others spent their leisure hours in elegant shaping and carving, like that of the South Sea Island clubs to be seen in museums. From savage through barbaric times the war-club lasted on into the middle ages of Europe, when knights still smashed helmets in with their heavy maces. Mostly used as a weapon, it only now and then appears in peaceful arts, as in the ribbed clubs with which the Polynesian women beat out bark cloth. It is curious to see how the rudest of primitive weapons, after its serious warlike use has ceased, survives as a symbol of power, when the mace is carried as emblem of the royal authority, and is laid on the table during the sitting of Parliament or the Royal Society. While the club has been generally a weapon, the hammer has been generally an implement. Its history begins with the smooth heavy pebble held in the hand, such as African blacksmiths to this day forge their iron with, on another smooth stone as anvil. It was a great improvement to fasten the stone hammer on a handle; this was done in very ancient times, as is seen by the stone heads being grooved or bored on purpose (see Fig. 54 i). Though the iron hammer has superseded these, a trace of the older use of stone remains in our very name hammer, which is the old Scandinavian hamarr, meaning both rock and hammer.

From beating we come to hacking and cutting. At the earliest times known of man’s life on the earth, his pointed and edged instruments of sharp stone are among his chief relics. Even in the mammoth-period he had already learnt not to be content with accidental chips of flint, but knew how to knock off two-edged flakes. This art of flaking flint or other suitable stones is the foundation of stone-implement making. Perhaps the best idea of it may be gained from the Suffolk gunflint makers who at this day carry on the primæval craft, though with better tools and for so different a purpose. Fig. 52 shows a gunflint-maker’s core of flint, with the flakes replaced where he has knocked them off, and the mark of the blow is seen which brought away each flake. The flakes made by Stone Age men for instruments may be three-sided like the Australian flake in Fig. 53 b. But the more convenient flat-backed shape a, c, has been used from the earliest known times. The flint core, Fig. 54 f, with the flakes e taken from it, shows how by previous flaking or trimming it was prepared for the new flake to come off with a suitable back. The finest flakes are those not struck off, but forced off by pressure with a flaking-tool of wood or horn. The neat Danish flake, Fig. 53 c, was no doubt made so, and the still more beautiful sharp flakes of obsidian with which the native barbers of Mexico, to the astonishment of Cortes’ soldiers, used to shave. A stone flake just as struck off may be fit for use as a knife, or as a spear head like that in Fig. 58 a; or by further chipping it may be made into a scraper, arrowhead, or awl, like those in Fig. 54.

The oldest known tribes of men have left in the drift gravels of the quaternary or mammoth-period not only rough flakes like Fig. 53 a, but the stone implements already mentioned in the first chapter, of which the drawing is here repeated in Fig. 55. Chipped to an edge all round, they may have served with the pointed end as picks and the broad end as hatchets. It is not clear whether any of them were fixed in handles, but there are specimens found which have only one end chipped to a point, but the other end of the flint left smooth, so that they were evidently grasped in the hand to hack with. There is nothing to show that these men of the old drift-period ever ground a stone implement to an edge. Thus their stone implements were far inferior to the neatly-shaped and sharp-edged ground celts of the later Stone Age, Fig. 54 a, Fig. 56 a. The word celt used for the various chisel-like instruments of rude and ancient tribes is a convenient term, taken from Latin celtis, a chisel, in the Vulgate translation of Job xix. 24, “celte sculpantur in silice;” but it has been thought that “graven with a chisel (celte) in the rock” is only a copyist’s blunder for “graven surely (certe) in the rock;” and if so, then celtis and celt are curious fictitious words. It may be worth while to mention that the name of the implements called celts has nothing to do with the name of the people called Celts or Kelts. A stone celt only requires a handle to make it into a hatchet. This was done very simply by the forest Indians of Brazil, who would pick up a suitable water-worn pebble, rub one end down to an edge, and bind it in a twig, Fig. 56 b. Another rude way of mounting a celt was to stick it into a club, so as to form a woodman’s or warrior’s axe such as c, which shows one dug out of a bog in Ireland. The most advanced method was to drill a hole through the stone blade to take the handle as in d. When the stone blade is fixed with the edge across, the tool becomes a carpenter’s adze, as e, which is the instrument used by the canoe-building Polynesians.

When metal came into use, the forms of the stone implements were imitated in copper, bronze, or iron, and though the patterns were of course lightened and otherwise improved to suit the new material, it may be plainly seen that the stone hatchets and spear-heads in museums are the ancestors (so to speak) of the metal ones made ever since. But also the use of metal brought in new and useful forms which stone was not suited to. An idea of these important changes may be gained by careful looking at the series of metal cutting-instruments in Fig. 57. We begin with a, which is an Egyptian bronze battle-axe, not very far changed from the stone hatchet. But b, the bronze falchion carried also by Egyptian warriors, is a sort of axe-blade with the handle not at the back, but shifted down; this convenient alteration could not have been made in the stone hatchet, which would have broken in the shank at the first blow, while in metal it answers perfectly. It may very well have been such transformed hatchets that led to the making of several most important classes of weapons and tools, in which a blade with stout back and front edge is fixed to a handle below it for chopping, slashing, or cutting. Among these are all the various forms of the sabre or scimitar, represented by c, all our ordinary knives, represented here by the European sheath-knife d, and all cleavers, represented by the Roman culter e. Nor does the development stop here, for the group of instruments to which our bill-hook belongs is made with a concave edge, as in the Indian form, f, and this again leads on to the still more curved forms of the sickle and the scythe, which are not drawn here. Thus there is some reason to suppose that all these instruments, whether tools or weapons, or such as, like the bill-hooks of the early English and the modern Malays, served alike for peace and war, may have all originated from the early metal hatchet, which itself is derived from the still earlier hatchet of stone.

From the early stone spear-heads another set of weapons seem to have gradually arisen, as may be seen in Fig. 58. Looking at the spear from the Admiralty Islands, a, the head of which is a large flake of obsidian, it is plain that such a spear, when the shaft is broken off short, becomes a dagger. In fact one often cannot tell whether the flint blades of shapes like b, which are dug up in Europe, were intended for mounting as spears or as daggers. Now the brittleness of stone was against the use of stone blades more than a few inches long, but when metal came in, the blades could be made long, taper, and sharp, thus developing into two-edged daggers of deadly effect. In old Egyptian pictures warriors are seen armed with spear and dagger, these two weapons having blades of similar shape, so that the dagger may be described as a large spear-head with a hilt to grasp in the hand. It seems as though the metal dagger, by further lengthening, passed into the two-edged sword, a weapon impossible in stone. To give an idea how this may have come about, Fig. 58 shows three specimens from the bronze-period of Northern Europe, where it is seen how the spear-head c may have been lengthened into the dagger d, and that again into the leaf-like sword e. Straight two-edged swords may of course be used for cut or thrust, or both. But on placing side by side a one-edged sabre and a two-edged broadsword or rapier, it will now be seen that though both are called swords, and are fitted up with similar hilts, hand-guards, and sheaths, they are nevertheless two weapons of separate nature and origin, the sabre being a transformed hatchet, while the rapier is a transformed spear. This last spear-type, of which one modern development is the bayonet, has mostly served for warlike purposes. Yet it is not unknown as a peaceful implement, as may be seen in African two-edged knives, which are evidently derived from spear heads; and also in the instrument which our surgeons, conscious of its original model, call the little spear or lancet.

To proceed to other kinds of tools. Thorns, pointed splinters of bone, or flint flakes worked to a point (Fig. 54 g), served early tribes of men as borers. The saw probably invented itself from a jagged flint flake, which afterwards became the more artificial flint saw, Fig. 54 h. Thus the men of the Stone Age had in rude and early forms some of the principal tools, which were improved upon in the ages of metal. It is interesting to look in Wilkinson’s Ancient Egyptians at the contents of the Egyptian carpenter’s tool-basket, where the bronze adze, saw, chisels, &c. show traces of likeness to the old stone implements. On the other hand, this Egyptian set of tools, and still more those of the ancient Greek and Roman carpenters, come remarkably near those we are using at this day. One difference which kept the ancient carpenters below ours was that they had not got beyond nails, never having seized the idea of the screws which are so essential to modern construction, nor of such tools as the screw-auger and gimlet, which depend on the screw for their action. Among the ancient cultured nations of Egypt and Assyria, handicrafts had already come to a stage which could only have been reached by thousands of years of progress. In museums may still be examined the work of their joiners, stonecutters, goldsmiths, wonderful in skill and finish, and often putting to shame the modern artificer. Of course these results were obtained by the ancient craftsman with what we should consider a wasteful expenditure of labour. The use of steel and other improvements have given the modern workman great advantages, and what is more, the modern world has utterly outstripped the ancient in the use of machines, as will be more fully seen presently when the examination of the simpler instruments has been gone through.

To continue the survey of weapons. The cudgel or club is hurled by the hunter or warrior, as when the Zulu will bring down an antelope at a surprising distance with a throw of his round-headed club or knob-kerry, and the Turk till modern times used to throw his mace in battle. The sporting use outlasts the warlike, and even in England the fowler’s throwing-cudgel is not unknown in country parts, where it is called a squoyle. A flat thin club made curved or crooked by following the branch it is cut out of has been liked by sportsmen of various nations for its destructive whirling flight, as where the old Egyptian fowler may be seen in the pictures flinging his flat curved throw-stick into the midst of a flight of wild-duck. The Australians not only throw wooden clubs and blades as weapons in this ordinary way, but make and throw with surprising skill a peculiar light curved blade which has been called the “come-back” boomerang, which veers in its course and returns to the thrower, in ways which may be seen by cutting boomerangs out of a visiting-card and flipping them. Again, it is evident that stones flung by hand must have been among man’s first weapons. A simple instrument for lengthening the arm and accumulating momentum is the sling, which is so generally known even among the lowest tribes of man, that it is probably of great antiquity.

The rudest spear, which is a mere pointed stick, is known everywhere in the savage world, the point being often hardened by thrusting it into the fire. Of spears, whether such clumsy sticks or more artificially pointed weapons, the heavier kinds serve for thrusting and the lighter for throwing, while intermediate sizes are fit for both purposes. It is obvious how, to prevent the spear from coming out of the wound, it came to be barbed. Another device, known widely among rude hunters and fishers, is to put the point loosely on to the shaft, attaching it by a cord of some length which uncoils when the point sticks in the animal and the shaft drops off, so that the struck beast cannot break away the shaft but drags it trailing, or the fish is held and marked down by the floating wood. The distance to which the spear can be hurled by hand is much increased by using a spear-thrower, acting like a sling. In Captain Cook’s time the New Caledonians slung their spears with a short cord with an eye for the finger, while the Roman soldiers had a thong (amentum) made fast to their javelins near the middle of the shaft for the same purpose. But wooden spear-throwers from one to three feet long, grasped at one end and with a peg or notch at the other to take the butt of the spear, have been more favourite with savage and barbaric races. Thus Fig. 59 shows the Australian spear-thrower. This looks a more primitive instrument than the bow, which indeed was not known to these rude savages. It seems as though with the progress of weapons the spear-thrower was discarded, for it is not found among any nation higher than the old Mexicans, and even among them it seems to have been kept up ceremonially from old times, rather than seriously used. The bow and arrow (as General Pitt-Rivers suggests) may very likely have grown out of a simpler contrivance, the spring-trap set in the woods by fitting a dart to an elastic branch, so fastened back as to be let go by a passing animal, in whose track it discharges the weapon. However invented, the bow came into use in ages before history. Its arrow is a miniature of the full-sized javelin, and the old stone arrow-heads found in most regions of the world (see Fig. 54 d) show the existence of the bow-and-arrow in the Stone Age, though hardly back to the drift-period. The art of feathering the arrow goes back as far as history, and we know not how much further. The simplest kind of long-bow is like that we still use in the sport of archery, made of one piece of tough wood. Fig. 60 a shows a long-bow of the forest-tribes of South America, unstrung, with its string hanging loose. What may be called the Tatar or Scythian bow is formed of several pieces of wood or horn, united with glue and sinews. Shorter than the long-bow, it gets its spring by being bent outside-in to string it; thus the concave side of the ancient Scythian-bow b would become the convex side when strung. Bows of this class belong especially to northern regions where there is a scarcity of tough wood suited to making long-bows in one piece. As a warlike weapon, the bow lasted on in Europe through the middle ages, and as late as 1814 the world looked on with wonder to see the Cossack cavalry ride armed with bows-and-arrows through the streets of Paris. A further step in the history of the bow was to mount it on a stock, so as to take aim at leisure and touch a trigger to let go the string. Thus it became the cross-bow, which seems to have been invented in the East, and was known in Roman Europe about the sixth century. In the figure, c represents it in its perfected form with a winch to draw the bow, as soldiers used it in the sixteenth century. Cross-bows are still made in Italy for shooting birds with a bolt or pellet.

To understand the next great move in missile weapons, it is necessary to look back to savage life. The blow-tube, through which the forest Indian of South America (Fig. 43) blows his tiny poisoned plug-darts, or the similar Malay weapon called the sumpitan, may have been easily invented wherever long large reeds grew. With simple darts or pellets the blow-tube served for shooting birds, and it is often kept up as a toy, as in our boys’ peashooters. When, however, gunpowder was applied in warfare, its use was soon adapted to make the blow-tube an instrument of tremendous power, when instead of the puff of breath in a reed, the explosion of powder in an iron barrel drove out the missile. In the early guns of the middle ages, the powder was fired by putting a coal or match to the touchhole, as continued to be done till lately with cannon. For hand-guns, this early match-lock was followed by the wheel-lock. This led up to the flint-lock, which it is curious to compare with the cross-bow, for the bent bow released by the trigger, which in the cross-bow did the actual work of shooting out the missile, has now come down, in the form of a spring and trigger, to the subordinate use of striking the light to ignite the powder which actually propels the ball. In more modern guns, the trigger and spring still remain, the improvement lying in the use of fulminating silver in the cap, ignited by the blow of the hammer. The rifling of the bullet by means of grooves in the barrel is the modern representative of the ancient plan of slightly twisting the spear-head or feathering the arrow to cause it to rotate, this giving increased steadiness of flight. The modern conical shot shows a partial return from the spherical bullet towards the ancient bolt or arrow, and at last breech-loading goes back to the old plan of putting the arrows in at the butt-end of the savage blow-tube.

As thus plainly appears, the ingenuity of man has been eminent in the art of destroying his fellow-men. In surveying the last group of deadly weapons, from the stone hurled by hand to the rifled cannon, there comes well into view one of the great advances of culture. This is the progress from the simple tool or implement, such as the club or knife, which enables man to strike or cut more effectively than with hands or teeth, to the machine which, when supplied with force, only needs to be set and directed by man to do his work. Man often himself provides the power which the machine distributes more conveniently, as when the potter turns the wheel with his own foot, using his hands to mould the whirling clay. The highest class of machines are those which are driven by the stored-up forces of nature, like the saw-mill where the running stream does the hard labour, and the sawyer has only to provide the timber and direct the cutting.

As to how simple mechanical powers were first learnt, it is of no use to guess in what rude and early age men found that stones or blocks too weighty to lift by hand could be prized up and moved along with a stout stick, or rolled on two or three round poles, or got up a long gentle slope more easily than up a short steep rise. Thus such discoveries as those of the lever, roller, and inclined plane, are quite out of historical reach. The ancient Egyptians used wedges to split off their huge blocks of stone, and one wonders that, knowing the pulley as they did, it never appears in the rigging of their ships (see Fig. 71). A draw-well with a pulley is to be seen in the Assyrian sculptures, where also a huge winged bull is being heaved along with levers, and dragged on a sledge with rollers laid underneath.

The wheel-carriage, which is among the most important machines ever contrived by man, must have been invented in ages before history. To see what constructive skill the leading nations had already attained to in times we reckon as of high antiquity, it is worth while to examine closely the Egyptian war-chariots, with their neatly-fitted and firmly-tired spoke-wheels turning on their axles secured by linchpins while the body, pole, and double harness show equal technical skill. In looking for some hint as to how wheel-carriages came to be invented, it is of little use to judge from such high skilled work as was turned out by these Egyptian chariot-builders, or by the Roman carpentarii or carriage-builders from whom our carpenters inherit their name. But as often happens, rude contrivances may be found which look as though they belonged to the early stages of the invention. The plaustrum or farm-cart of the ancient world in its rudest form had for wheels two solid wooden drums near a foot thick, and made from a tree-trunk cut across, which drums or wheels did not turn on the axle but were fixed to it; the axle was kept in place by wooden stops, or passed through rings at the bottom of the cart, and went round together with its pair of wheels, as children’s toy carts are made. It is curious to notice how, under changed conditions, the builders of railway-carriages have returned to this early construction. In the ancient cart, Fig. 61, the squared end of the axle shows that it must turn with the wheels. In such countries as Portugal the old classic bullock-cart on this principle is still to be seen, and it has been reasonably guessed that such carts tell the story how wheel-carriages came to be invented. Rollers were early used, on which a block of stone or other heavy weight was trundled. Suppose such a roller made of a smoothed tree-trunk to be improved by cutting the middle part smaller, so that it became an axle and pair of broad wheels in one piece, then by making this axle work underneath the rudest framework, the simplest imaginable wheel-carriage is made. If the first notion of a cart were thus suggested, the wheels might afterwards be made separately and pinned on to the square axle, and provided with tires. Then, for light wheels and smooth ground, the wheels would at last be made to turn on fixed axles. This is only conjecture, but at any rate it puts clearly before our minds what the nature of a carriage is.

Another ancient machine is the mill. The rudest tribes of savages had a simple and effective means ready to hand for powdering charcoal and ochre to paint themselves with, or for the more useful work of bruising wild seeds gathered for food. The whole apparatus consists of a roundish stone held in the hand, and a larger hollowed stone for a bed. It is curious to notice how closely our pestle and mortar still keeps to this primitive type. Now any one using the pestle and mortar may notice that it works in two ways, the stuff being either pounded by striking, or ground by rubbing against the side of the mortar. When people took to agriculture, and grain became a chief part of their food, and mealing it the women’s heavy work, forms of mealing-stones came into use suited not for pounding but for grinding only, and doing this more perfectly. An example may be seen in Fig. 62, a rude ancient corn-crusher dug up in Anglesey, the stone muller or roller having its sides hollowed for the hands of the grinder, who worked it back and forward on the bed-stone. The perfection of such a corn-crusher may be seen in the “metate” with its neatly shaped bed and rolling-pin of lava, with which the Mexican women crush the maize for their corn-cakes or tortillas. But it is by one stone revolving upon the other that grain is best ground, and here we have the principle of the mill. The quern or hand-mill of the ancient world in its simple form consisted of two circular flat mill stones, the upper being turned by a handle, while the grain was poured in through the hole in the centre, and came out as meal all round the edge. This early hand-mill has lasted on into the modern world, and Fig. 63 shows “two women grinding at the mill,” as they might be seen in the Hebrides in the last century; the long stick, which hangs from a branch above, has its end in a hole in the upper stone, and a cloth is spread on the ground to catch the meal. The quern is still used in north Scotland and the islands. If the reader will notice the construction of a modern flour-mill, it will be seen that the neatly faced and grooved millstones are now of great weight, and the upper one balanced on the pivot which gives it rapid rotation from below by means of water or steam-power, but notwithstanding these mechanical improvements, the essential principle of the primitive hand-mill is still there.

Another group of revolving tools and machines begins with the drill. The simplest mode of twirling the boring-stick between the hands is to be seen in fire-making (Fig. 72). In this clumsy way rude tribes know how to bore holes through hard stone by patiently twirling a reed or stick with sharp sand and water. This primitive tool was improved both for making fire and boring holes, by winding round the stick a thong or cord, which by being pulled backward and forward worked the drill, as the ancient shipwrights boring their timbers are described in the Odyssey (ix. 384). The ingenious plan of using a bow with its string to drive the drill, so that one man can manage it, was already known in the old Egyptian workshops, but the still more perfect Archimedean drill is modern. The turning-lathe seems to have had its origin in the drill. To those who have only seen the lathe in its improved modern forms this may not be clear, but it is seen by looking at the old-fashioned pole-lathe with which the turner used to shape his wooden bowls and chair-legs, which were made to revolve by a cord pulled up and down, on somewhat the same principle as the Homeric drill. The foot-lathe, with its crank and continuous revolution, superseded this, to be itself encroached upon by the introduction of steam-power for driving, and even for applying the tool in the self-acting lathe.

In examining these groups of instruments and machines, the development of many of them has been traced back till their origins are lost in dim præhistoric ages, or to where ancient history can show them arising from a fresh idea or a new turn given to an old one. It is seldom possible to get at the real author of an ancient invention. Thus no one knows exactly when and how that wonderful mechanical contrivance, the screw, appeared. It was familiar to the Greek mathematicians, and the screw linen-presses and oil-presses of classic times look almost modern in their construction. In the period of ancient civilization there appear the beginnings of that immense change which is remodelling modern life, by inventions which set the forces of nature to do man’s heavy work for him. This great change seems to have been especially brought on by contrivances to save the heavy toil of watering the fields. A simple hand-labour contrivance of this kind is the shadoof of the Nile valley, where a long pole with a counterpoise at one end is supported on posts, and carries a bucket hanging to the longer end to dip up water from below. One need not travel to the East to watch this old contrivance, for it is to be seen at work in our brickfields. For irrigation, it was mechanically an improvement on this to set a gang of slaves to turn a great wheel with buckets or earthen jars at its circumference, which rose full from the water below, and as they turned over emptied themselves into a trough at a higher level. But when such a wheel was built to dip in a running stream, then the current itself would turn the wheel, and thus would come into existence the noria or irrigating water-wheel often mentioned in ancient literature, and to be seen still at work both in the East and in Europe. By these or some similar steps of invention the water-wheel was made a source of power for doing other work, such as grinding corn, instead of the women at the quern or the slaves at the tread-mill, or the mill-horse in his everlasting round. As the Greek epigram says, “Cease your work, ye maids who laboured at the mills, sleep and let the birds sing to the returning dawn, for Demeter has bidden the water nymphs to do your task; obedient to her call, they throw themselves on the wheel and turn the axle and the heavy mill.” The classical corn-mill, with the cog-wheels driven by the water-wheel, may have been a good deal like the water-mills still working on our country streams. Such machinery was early applied to grinding corn, and afterwards to other manufactures, so that now the word mill no longer means a grinding-mill only, but is also used where machinery is driven by power for other purposes. It was a great movement in civilization for the water-mill and its companion contrivance the wind-mill to come into use as force-providers, doing all sorts of labour, from the heaviest work of the European factory down to turning the Tibetan prayer-wheels, which go round repeating for ever the sacred Buddhist formula. Within the last century the civilized world has been drawing an immense supply of power from a new source, the coal burnt in the furnace of the steam-engine, which is already used so wastefully that economists are uneasily calculating how long this stored-up fossil force will last, and what must be turned to next—tide force or sun’s heat—to labour for us. Thus, in modern times, man seeks more and more to change the labourer’s part he played in early ages, for the higher duty of director or controller of the world’s force.