“An equal appreciation of all parts of knowledge,” it was remarked by Humboldt, “is an especial requirement of an epoch in which the material wealth and the increasing prosperity of nations are in a great measure based on a more enlightened employment of natural products and forces. The most superficial glance at the present condition of European states shows that those which linger in the race cannot hope to escape the partial diminution, and perhaps the final annihilation, of their resources. It is with nations as with nature, which, according to a happy expression of Goethe, knows no pause in ever-increasing movement, development, and production—a curse, still cleaving to a standstill. Nothing but serious occupation with chemistry and physical and natural science can defend a state from the consequences of competition. Man can produce no effect upon nature, or appropriate her powers, unless he is conversant with her laws, and with their relations to material objects according to measures and numbers. And in this lies the power of popular intelligence, which rises or falls as it encourages or neglects this study. Science and information are the joy and justification of mankind. They form the spring of a nation’s wealth, being often indeed substitutes for those material riches which nature has in many cases distributed with so partial a hand. Those nations which remain behind in manufacturing activity, by neglecting the practical application of the mechanical arts, and of industrial chemistry, to the transmission, growth, or manufacture of raw materials—those nations amongst whom respect for such activity does not pervade all classes—must inevitably fall from prosperity they have attained; and this so much the more certainly and speedily as neighbouring states, instinct with the power of renovation, in which science and the arts of industry operate or lend each other mutual assistance, are seen pressing forward in the race.” Upon this principle Mr. Reynolds placed himself under the teaching of Dr. Black, the discoverer of latent heat, a gentleman who by his eminent ability and teaching did so much to inspire a love for the science in England during the latter part of the last century. He was thus enabled to bring the knowledge he possessed of elementary substances and of their peculiar qualities, gained in the laboratory, to bear upon the manufacture of iron in the furnace and the forge, and to anticipate some of the discoveries of later times.