On the permanency of such forces and their mutual play the universe rests, and its wonderful history. With the collapse of any of them it would cease to have any more a footing in space, and all its elements would rush into instant confusion. What a Hand, therefore, that must be which holds them up, and what a Wisdom which guides their movements! Verily, He that sends them forth and bids them work His will is greater than any one--greater than all of them together. How insignificant, then, should we seem before Him who rules them on the wide scale by commanding them, while we can only rule them on the small by obeying them! And yet how benignant must we regard Him to be who both wields them Himself for our benefit and subjects them to our intelligence and control! FOOTNOTES: [B] This paper on "Attraction" is the substance of a lecture which I composed on the basis of notes taken by me when. I had the honour of attending the Prince of Wales at the course given, on the same subject by the late Professor Faraday. The Professor, having seen the _resumé_ I had written, warmly commended the execution, and generously accorded me his sanction to make any use of it, whether for the purpose of a lecture or otherwise, as might seem good to me. It is on the ground of this sanction I feel warranted to print it here. _THE OIL FROM LINSEED_. Various processes have for a long time been in use for the purpose of extracting the oils from different species of nuts and seeds, a few of the more interesting of which are not unworthy of brief notice and description. In Ceylon, where cocoa-nuts and oil-producing seeds abound, the means employed by the natives in the last century for extracting the oils were of a most primitive character. A few poles were fixed upright in the ground, two horizontal bars attached to them, between which a bag containing the pulp of the seed or nut was placed. A lever was then applied to the horizontal bars, which brought them together, thus creating a pressure which, by squeezing the bag, gradually expressed the oil from the pulpy substance. This rude machine was at that time of day one of the most approved for the purpose. The system of pestle and mortar was also in use, but as the process was necessarily very slow, this method was seldom resorted to. An improvement on this system was invented by a Mr. Herbert, whose design it had been to construct a powerful and efficient machine which should combine cheapness and simplicity. It consisted of three pieces of wood, viz., an upright piece fixed in the ground, from the lower and upper extremities of which there projected the two other pieces, the top one attached to the joint of a long horizontal lever, and the lower one to the joint of a vertical one. The fixed upright post and the horizontal lever formed the press. The bag of pulp being put between the upright one and the vertical, the pressure was obtained by suspending a negro or a weight from the lever.