It has been objected that Continental nations, the Germans in particular, have pirated our patents, infringed our designs, imitated our labels, used our names, and taken our improvements wholesale, and this may be true. But we still have had by far the largest portion of the reward of our greater energy and inventive skill; we have had the great advantage of being first in the markets of the world; and that advantage can only be retained by our being the first in the pursuit of original research, as we have so long been in the application of science to industrial arts, and not by purchasing foreign inventions, nor by accepting gifts of unrecompensed researches. Nations as well as individuals are apt to push to an extreme the means by which they have succeeded in gaining either riches or power. We have devoted ourselves relatively too much to the pursuit of money and too little to the pursuit of knowledge. The desire for wealth is in this country so great, that probably nothing but a loss of that wealth will ever make us properly encourage the pursuit of new knowledge. Whilst research is being neglected, manufacturers and others in all directions are asking for improvements in their machines and processes; employers of steam engines want to obtain more power from the coals; makers of washing soda wish to recover their lost sulphur; copper smelters, want to utilize the copper smoke; glass makers wish to prevent bad colour in their glass; iron puddlers want to economise heat; gas companies are desirous of diminishing the {69} leakage of gas; iron smelters wish to avoid the evil effects of impurities in the iron; manufacturers in general want to utilise their waste products and prevent their polluting our streams and atmosphere; and so on without end. And inventors are continually trying to supply these demands, by exercising their skill in every possible way, with the aid of scientific information contained in books; but after putting manufacturers and themselves to great expense, they very frequently fail, not always through want of inventive skill, but often through want of _new_ knowledge attainable only by means of pure research. Judging from the vast amount of inventive skill already expended upon the steam engine, and the small proportion of available mechanical power yet obtained from the coals consumed in it, it is highly probable that a machine for completely converting heat into mechanical force cannot be invented until more scientific knowledge is discovered.