During the last one hundred years this nation has advanced with unexampled speed. More wealth has been accumulated by Englishmen since the commencement of the present century, than in all preceding time since the period of Julius Cæsar; one of the causes of this has been the discovery of new truths of science, and their subservience to useful purposes by means of invention. The great manufacturing success of this country has been largely due to those applications of science, which have enabled us to utilise our abundant stores of coal and iron-ore, in steam engines, machinery, and a multitude of mechanical, physical, and chemical processes; also to the discovery of electro-magnetism and its application in the electric-telegraph, etc. And had it not been for these and other adaptations of scientific knowledge, we should have competed in vain with the cheaper labour and longer days of toil of continental nations. Other great causes, such as our insular position, suitable climate, freedom, {2} geographical position, etc., etc. have, however, also contributed to the result. Commerce also in its turn has done vast things for mankind. The purely scientific knowledge we possess was discovered almost entirely by means of original research, and to only a small extent by persons engaged in industrial occupations. Probably not two per cent. of all the important discoveries in pure science were made in manufactories; the scientific experiments which are made in such establishments are usually of the nature of invention, not of discovery, and are not often published, because it is a usual object with men of business to retain as much as possible of the pecuniary benefit of their labours to themselves. Whilst it is the object of a business man to monopolise special knowledge; that of the scientific man is to diffuse it, in order that all mankind may be benefited and helped to improve. Discoveries in science are, however, occasionally made by practical men engaged in technical employments. The hydro-electric machine originated in this way, a man at Newcastle was attending to a steam boiler, and found that he received electric shocks when he touched the boiler. This circumstance was investigated by his employer, Mr. Armstrong, a scientific man, and led him to construct the hydro-electric machine. The accumulation of electricity in submarine telegraph cables was first observed at the Gutta-Percha Company's works {3} London. It was noticed on testing a cable by means of a voltaic battery (the cable being submerged in water) that discharges of electricity flowed from the cable after the battery was removed; this circumstance was investigated by Faraday, and led to improvements in submarine telegraphy. In each of these instances the same general method as that used by scientific discoverers was however employed, viz., new experiments were made (though not intentionally) by putting matter and its forces under new conditions, and new results were observed.