THE DREAMS OF SCIENCE.

Wanganui Chronicle, Issue 12824, 16 October 1911, Page 7

THE DREAMS OF SCIENCE.

In another century and three-quar i<?rs the British coal mines -will be & far exhausted that the people livinj then -will stand face to faco with fam mo and misery. Such is the portent ous warning of Sir William Ramsay .tho distinguished chemist But by tha1 tiino who know.s what dreams of scieiux niay huvo been realised, and what ne\i sources of energy may have been discovoieJ to take the place of coal. StephHiitjoi), it will ho remembered, defined coal aa "bottled sunshine"—bottied by Nature millions of years age to drive, among other things, tho New Zealand railways in tho twentieth century of tho Christian ora. Suppose we should hazard the audacious presumption that before sohio of .to-day's schoolboys are old men liners will 'bo driven across tho At'antic by stored electricity? A hundred years ago a dreamer predicted that ships would bo propelled by steam from Britain to America. "Jlidiculous!" exclaimed l)ioi:ysiiifl Lardner, and many greater authorities. And it -was not mere sciolists, but men of the highest, authority, who ridiculed with that scorn "which wWlonii hold unlawful ever" tho idea of electric light and still more or electric traction. Michael Faraday will bo held in tho greatest esteem for hifi olectrical discoveries, yet Faraday classed <:eiectnc light" with tablerapping and other similar absurdities. What would ho have said of electric trains and tramways? He died on August 25, 1867, and in loss than 30 years1 electric railways were m existence. How this great man would have ..stood amazed to'hear of electric stations with turbine engines of 15,000 horse-power! How all, or nearly all, of evon the most far-seeing of his contemporaries wauld have condemned absolutely tho thought that by electric ethereal waves ive should talk vritn pcoplo 2000 miles away without uttering a sound! Strangely enough, in one field of effort mankind has been •sanguine oven from very early times— namely, in tho belief that some day man would be ablo to fly. Tho sturdy faith was vsound, though the facts seemed to be all against it. It stood tor tho ages as a beacon of presumption. Yet tho dreamers wero right, though tho fulfilment of their dreams tamo in a way they could not possibly anticipate. No. man'dreamt of a steamengine ere it was invented, and there was no talk of internal combustion engi no.'; before tho days of gas and petrol. It is not rash to bo very hopeful of what Science may accomplish: iho pi-esunstion is io place a limit and .*riy what sho cannot do. Nature sells her {.-ecretw at a price. Great laws like Newton's, instruments of knowledge like fcho Calculus, do not come unbidden. Wo must pay tho price" of research. That prico we must nay for the storage of electricity. f£ may bo a long and arduous research, but it will succeed. Tho inY3ntivo engineer is on tho way to success; and not thus alone, but in many other unknown ways, the futuro will be taken care'of, and Britain T\ ill not be face to face with famine and misery within the next two, nor within tho noxi twenty, centuries.