Town Geology | Page 4

of photography, and have given employment
to thousands of persons who practise that process, or manufacture and
prepare the various material and articles required in it. The discovery of
chlorine by Scheele led to the invention of the modern processes of
bleaching, and to various improvements in the dyeing of the textile
fabrics, and has given employment to a very large number of our
Lancashire operatives. The discovery of chlorine has also contributed
to the employment of thousands of printers, by enabling Esparto grass
to be bleached and formed into paper for the use of our daily press. The
numerous experimental investigations in relation to coal-gas have been
the means of extending the use of that substance, and of increasing the
employment of workmen and others connected with its manufacture.
The discovery of the alkaline metals by Davy, of cyanide of potassium,
of nickel, phosphorus, the common acids, and a multitude of other
substances, has led to the employment of a whole army of workmen in
the conversion of those substances into articles of utility. The foregoing
examples might be greatly enlarged upon, and a great many others
might be selected from the sciences of physics and chemistry: but those
mentioned will suffice. There is not a force of Nature, nor scarcely a

material substance that we employ, which has not been the subject of
several, and in some cases of numerous, original experimental
researches, many of which have resulted, in a greater or less degree, in
increasing the employment for workmen and others." {1}
"All this may be very true. But of what practical use will physical
science be to me?"
Let me ask in return: Are none of you going to emigrate? If you have
courage and wisdom, emigrate you will, some of you, instead of
stopping here to scramble over each other's backs for the scraps, like
black-beetles in a kitchen. And if you emigrate, you will soon find out,
if you have eyes and common sense, that the vegetable wealth of the
world is no more exhausted than its mineral wealth. Exhausted? Not
half of it--I believe not a tenth of it--is yet known. Could I show you
the wealth which I have seen in a single Tropic island, not sixty miles
square--precious timbers, gums, fruits, what not, enough to give
employment and wealth to thousands and tens of thousands, wasting
for want of being known and worked-- then you would see what a man
who emigrates may do, by a little sound knowledge of botany alone.
And if not. Suppose that any one of you, learning a little sound Natural
History, should abide here in Britain to your life's end, and observe
nothing but the hedgerow plants, he would find that there is much more
to be seen in those mere hedgerow plants than he fancies now. The
microscope will reveal to him in the tissues of any wood, of any seed,
wonders which will first amuse him, then puzzle him, and at last (I
hope) awe him, as he perceives that smallness of size interferes in no
way with perfection of development, and that "Nature," as has been
well said, "is greatest in that which is least." And more. Suppose that he
went further still. Suppose that he extended his researches somewhat to
those minuter vegetable forms, the mosses, fungi, lichens; suppose that
he went a little further still, and tried what the microscope would show
him in any stagnant pool, whether fresh water or salt, of Desmidiae,
Diatoms, and all those wondrous atomies which seem as yet to defy our
classification into plants or animals. Suppose he learnt something of
this, but nothing of aught else. Would he have gained no solid wisdom?

He would be a stupider man than I have a right to believe any of my
readers to be, if he had not gained thereby somewhat of the most
valuable of treasures--namely, that inductive habit of mind, that power
of judging fairly of facts, without which no good or lasting work will
be done, whether in physical science, in social science, in politics, in
philosophy, in philology, or in history.
But more: let me urge you to study Natural Science, on grounds which
may be to you new and unexpected--on social, I had almost said on
political, grounds.
We all know, and I trust we all love, the names of Liberty, Equality,
and Brotherhood. We feel, I trust, that these words are too beautiful not
to represent true and just ideas; and that therefore they will come true,
and be fulfilled, somewhen, somewhere, somehow. It may be in a shape
very different from that which you, or I, or any man expects; but still
they will be fulfilled.
But if they are to come true, it is we, the individual men, who