The great pecuniary benefits arising from the applications of science are generally reaped in the first instance by the great manufacturers, agriculturists, merchants, and capitalists. Countless fortunes have been made by means of processes and manufactures based upon scientific discovery. The pecuniary benefits of calico printing, bleaching, dyeing; of the great manufactures of cotton, iron, pottery, beer, sugar, glass, spirits, vinegar, gutta-percha, india-rubber, gun cotton, the numerous metals, machinery, electro-plate, washing soda, German silver, brass, phosphorus, manures, the common acids, numerous chemicals, and a multitude of other substances and articles, have been extremely great. More than eighteen hundred million pounds of sulphuric acid alone are manufactured in Europe yearly. The pecuniary advantages of the use of the electric telegraph and railways to merchants, the gains of capitalists by monies invested in railways, telegraphs, steam-ships, cotton-mills, gas-works, {28} iron shipbuilding, engineering, and other great applications of science, have been enormous. The annual gas rental of London alone amounts to more than two millions sterling; and even in Birmingham the produce of gas is more than twenty-five hundred millions of cubic feet yearly. The amount of capital expended in the construction of railways only in this country, has been estimated at more than seven hundred millions of pounds, and the total receipts upon British railways has reached forty-three millions per annum. In the year 1875 our railways carried 200 million tons of goods, and consumed ten million tons of coal; the Great Northern Railway alone consumes 5,000 tons of coal each week. In the year 1877 there existed in the entire world about 198,000 miles of railway, the whole having been constructed since the year 1825. In the year 1880 six hundred millions of journeys were made by passengers on British railways; and the stock of those railways included 13,174 locomotives; 369,694 waggons, 28,717 passenger carriages, and 22,712 other vehicles. The London and North-Western Railway Company alone possessed, in the year 1873, no less than 1,900 locomotive engines, each of a value of nearly two thousand pounds; 4,000 carriages and 36,000 waggons; and it has been estimated by competent authorities, that there are in the world 200,000 steam-engines, having a total power of twelve million horses, or 100 million men. The number of cotton spindles on the whole Earth is {29} estimated at about 71¼ millions. In the United States of America there are about five thousand telegraph stations, and 75,000 miles of line, which transmit yearly about 11,500,000 messages.--The telegrams of Great Britain number about one-fourth of a million per week. The world's telegrams during the year 1877 numbered nearly 130 millions; and the world's letters about 3,300 millions, or 9¼ millions each day. Even the little phosphorus match is