It is now known to us as benzine, which is so largely employed in the industrial arts.  Treated by nitric acid, that has produced a substance largely used by the perfumer and the confectioner.  From that came the wonderful base aniline, which was not only useful in the study of chemistry, as throwing light on the internal structure of organic compounds, but has come also into commerce, creating a great branch of industry, by giving strong and high colors which can be fixed on cotton, woolen, and silken fabrics.  It may be worth while to notice what gratifying beauty was provided for the eye, while profitable work was afforded to the industrious.

It is not to be forgotten that, whatever we have of magneto-electric light, in all its various applications, is due to Faraday’s discoveries.

Faraday’s distinguished successor, Professor Tyndall, in his admirable and generous tribute to his famous predecessor, says:  “As far as electricity has been applied for medical purposes, it is almost exclusively Faraday’s.”  How much of addition to human comfort that one sentence includes, who can estimate?  And who can calculate the money-value to commerce in the production of instruments used in the application of electricity to medicine?  Professor Tyndall continues:  “You have noticed those lines of wire which cross the streets of London.  It is Faraday’s currents that speed from place to place through these wires.  Approaching the point of Dungeness, the mariner sees an unusually brilliant light, and from the noble Pharos of La Heve the same light flashes across the sea.  These are Faraday’s sparks, exalted by suitable machinery to sunlight splendor.  At the present moment (1868), the Board of Trade and the Brethren of the Trinity House, as well as the Commissioners of Northern Lights, are contemplating the introduction of the magneto-electric light at numerous points upon our coast; and future generations will be able to point to those guiding stars in answer to the question, what has been the practical use of the labors of Faraday?”

SIEMENS

One of the most useful of modern men was Sir William Siemens, who was born in 1823 and died in 1883.  The year before his death he was president of the British Association, and was introduced by his predecessor, Sir J. Lubbock, with the statement that “the leading idea of Dr. Siemens’s life had been to economize and utilize the force of Nature for the benefit of man.”  It is not our purpose to give a sketch of his life, or a catalogue of his many inventions, all of which were useful.  It was his comprehensive and accurate study of the universe which led him to discover, as he thought, that it is a vast regenerative gas furnace.  The theory has been that the sun is cooling down; but Dr. Siemens saw that the water, vapor, and carbon compounds of the interstellar spaces are returned to the sun, and that the action of the sun on these literally converted