By a similar plan, however, a speculative American set some time ago the industrial world of Europe in excitement. The magneto-electric machines often made use of in the case of rheumatic disorders are well known to the public. By imparting a swift rotation to the magnet of such a machine, we obtain powerful currents of electricity. If those be conducted through water, the latter will be reduced into its two components, oxygen and hydrogen. By the combustion of hydrogen, water is again generated. If this combustion takes place, not in atmospheric air, of which oxygen only constitutes a fifth part, but in pure oxygen, and if a bit of chalk be placed in the flame, the chalk will be raised to a white heat, and give us the sun-like Drummond’s light. At the same time, the flame develops a considerable quantity of heat. Our American proposed to utilize in this way the gases obtained from electrolytic decomposition, and asserted that by the combustion a sufficient amount of heat was generated to keep a small steam engine in action, which again drove his magneto-electric machine, decomposed the water, and thus continually prepared its own fuel. This would certainly have been the most splendid of all discoveries; a perpetual motion which, besides the force which kept it going, generated light like the sun, and warmed all around it. The matter was by no means badly cogitated. Each practical step in the affair was known to be possible; but those who at that time were acquainted with the physical investigations which bear upon this subject could have affirmed, on first hearing the report, that the matter was to be numbered among the numerous stories of the fable-rich America; and indeed a fable it remained. It is not necessary to multiply examples further. You will infer from those given, in what immediate connection heat, electricity, magnetism, light, and chemical affinity, stand with mechanical forces. Starting from each of these different manifestations of natural forces we can set every other in motion, for the most part not in one way merely, but in many ways. It is here as with the weaver’s web-- Where a step stirs a thousand threads The shuttles shoot from side to side, The fibres flow unseen, And one shock strikes a thousand combinations.