; likewise are sugar and
hydrates of carbon known; nor will it be long before the secret of
compounding azote is out. The food problem is a purely chemical one.
The day when the corresponding cheap power shall have been obtained,
food of all sort will be producable with carbon out of carbon oxides,
and with hydrogen and acids out of water, and with nitrogen out of the
atmosphere. What until now vegetation has done, industry will
thenceforth perform, and more perfectly than Nature itself. The time
will come when everyone will carry about him a little box of chemicals
wherewith to provide his food supply of albumen, fat and hydrates of
carbon, regardless of the hour of the day or the season of the year,
regardless of rain or drought, of frost or hail, or insects. A
revolution will then set in of which no conception is so far possible.
Fields bearing fruit, wine-bearing mountain slopes and pastures for
cattle will have vanished. Man will have gained in gentleness and
morality seeing he no longer lives on the murder and destruction of
living beings. Then also will the difference drop away between fertile
and barren districts; perchance deserts may then become the favorite
homes of man being healthier than the damp valleys and the
swamp-infected plains. Then also will Art, together with all the
beauties of human life reach full development. No longer will the face
of earth be marred, so to speak, with geometrical figures, now entailed
by agriculture: it will become a garden in which, at will, grass or
flowers, bush or woods, can be allowed to grow, and in which the human
race will live in plenty, in a Golden Age. Nor will man thereby sink
into indolence and corruption. Work is requisite to happiness, and man
will work as much as ever, because he will be working for himself aiming
at the highest development of his mental, moral and esthetical powers."

Every reader may accept what he please of this address of Prof.
Berthelot; certain, however, is the prospect that in the future and in
virtue of the progress of science, wealth--the volume and variety of
products--will increase enormously, and that the pleasures of life of
the coming generations will take undreamed of increment.

An aspiration, deeply implanted in the nature of man, is that of freedom
in the choice and change of occupation. As uninterrupted repetition
renders the daintiest of dishes repulsive, so with a daily
treadmill-like recurring occupation: it dulls and r