cyclone. It maps for
the sailor the currents, aerial and subaqueous, of each spot on the
unmarked main, and sends him warning far ahead of the tempest. It
divides with the thermometer the mass of brine into horizontal zones,
and assigns to each its special population.

A hundred years ago, only the surface of the land was studied, and but
a small part of that. All beneath its surface was a mystery, and the
lore of the sea was untouched. Now, knowledge has penetrated to the
central fire, and of the sea it can be no longer said that man's
"control stops with its shores." The pathway of his messenger from
continent to continent he has laid deep in its chalky ooze, while over
it silt silently, flake by flake, as they have been falling since aeons
before his creation, the induviae of the earliest creatures.

And this his messenger at the bottom of the sea is back in its old
home. First hidden in the electron cast up by the waves of the Baltic,
it was left there, uncomprehended and barren, till our century. During
all that time it was calling from the clouds to man's dazzled eye and
deafened ear. It pervaded the air he breathed, the ground he trod and
the frame which constituted him. It bore his will from brain to hand,
and guarded his life, through the (so-called) spontaneously acting
muscles of the thorax, during the half or third of his life during
which his will slumbered. At length its call was hearkened to
intelligently. Franklin made it articulate. Its twin Champollions came
in Volta and Galvani. Its few first translated words have, under a
host of elucidators, swelled to volumes. They link into one language
the dialects of light, motion and heat. The indurated turpentine of
the Pomeranian beach speaks the tongue of the farthest star.

The sciences, like the nations and like bees, as they grow too large
for their hive are perpetually swarming and colonizing. Not that
colonization is followed, as in the case of the similitude, by
independence. Their mutual bonds become closer and closer. But
convenience and (so to speak) comfort require the nominal separation.
So electricity sets up for itself; and chemistry, the metropolis,
swells into other offshoots. So numerous and so great are these that
the old alchemists, unlimited range through the material, immaterial
and supernatural as they claimed for their art, would rub their eyes,
bleared over blowpipe and alembic, at sight of its present riches. The
half-hewn block ha