THE GIFTS OF SCIENCE DURING THE LAST HALF-CENTURY.

New Zealand Times, Volume XLVI, Issue 7776, 7 May 1886, Page 4

THE GIFTS OF SCIENCE DURING THE LAST HALF-CENTURY.

The first railway for locomotives, which was constructed between Stoektßn and Darlington, was opened, in September, lijflfl, sb that I nave the doUßtful ad vantage of about four m'onlhrV sehiCrlly oVer the ancestral t'epreeentativo of the Vast reticulated fetohihg and carrying org.anism which Udvv bite rids its Meshes over the civilised wbrld, I bonfoes it fills, hie With astohisbbient to think that thh tithe V/neh ido Man could travel fasteh than horses could transport him, when our means of locomotion were no better than those of Achilles or of Ramses Malmnn, lies within my rnembry. The electric telegraph, as a thing for practical Use; is fat my juniop. fid ate arms of pteoision, unless the otd rifle be regarded as such. Again, the application to hygiene, and to the medical and surgical treatment of men and aUinials; of our knowledge of the phenomena of parasitism and the very discovery ot the tnie order of these phenomena, is i long Wily within the 'ooihpdfis of hiy petshnal knowledge, tk is , übnecessary for me to enumerate more than these four of the i-icli gifts made by science to mankind during the past sixty years. Arresting the survey here, I would ask if there is any corresponding period in previous history which can take credit for so many momentous applications ot scientific knowledge to the wants of mankind 1 Depreciators of the value of natural knowledge are wont to speak somewhat scornfully of these and such like benefactions as mere additions to material welfare. I must own to the weakness of believing that material welfare is highly desirable in itself, and I have yet to meet with the man who prefers material ill fare. But even if this should be, as some may say, painful evidences of materialistic tendencies incidental to scientific pursuits, it is surely possible, without much ingenuity or any prejudice in favor of one or other view of the mutual relations Of material aUd spiritual phenomena to show that each of these four applications of science has exerted a prodigious influence on the moral, social) and political relations of mankind, and that such influence can only increase as time goes on. If the senseless antipathies, born of isolation, which formerly Converted neighbors, whether they belonged to adjacent families or to adjacent nations, into natural enemies, are dying away, improved meads of Communication desbrvO the chief credit of the change J if war becomes less frequent it will be chiefly because its horrors are being intensified beyond bearing by the close interdependence and community of interest thus established between nations, no less than by the improvement of the means of destruction by scientific invention. Arms of precision have taken the mastery of the World oilt of the hands of brute force and given it to Industry and intelligence, if railways afld electric telegraphs haVe rendered it Unnecessary that modern empires should tall to pieces by Iheir 6wn wfeight) as ancient empires did, arms of precision have provided against the possibility of their being swept away by barbarous invasions. Health means not merely wealth, not merely bodily welfare, but intellectual and moral soundness, and I doubt if, since the time of the father of medicine, any discovery has contributed so much to the pro motion of health and the cure of disease as that of the part played by fungoid parasites in the animal economy, and that of the means of checking them, even though, as yet, unfortunately it be only in a few cases. —Prof. Huxley’s address to the Koyal Society.