e-eminent. The scope of each of these sciences is
so extended, the number of workers so great, and the applications to the
practical arts so nearly innumerable, that it is often by no means an
easy task correctly to trace their proper growth and development.

Faraday's investigations covered vast fields in the domain of chemistry,
electricity, and magnetism. It is to the last two only that reference
will here be made. Faraday's life-work in electricity and magnetism
began practically in 1831, when he made his immortal discovery of the
direct production of electricity from magnetism. His best work in
electricity and magnetism was accomplished between 1831 and 1856,
extending, therefore, over a period of some twenty-five years, although
it is not denied that good work was done since 1856. Consequently, it
was at so comparatively recent a date that most of Faraday's work was
done that some of the world's distinguished electricians yet live who
began their studies during the latter years of Faraday's life. The
difficulties of tracing, at least to some extent, the influence that
Faraday's masterly investigations have had on the present condition of
the electrical arts and sciences will, therefore, be considerably
lessened.

The extent of Faraday's researches and discoveries in magnetism and
electricity was so great that it will be impossible, in the necessarily
limited space of a brief biographical sketch, to notice any but the more
prominent. Nor will any attempt be made, except where the nature of the
research or discovery appears to render it advisable, to follow any
strict chronological order; for, our inquiry here is not so much
directed to a mere matter of history as to the influence which the
investigation or discovery exerted on the life and civilization of the
age in which we live.

There is a single discovery of Faraday that stands out sharply amidst
all his other discoveries, great as they were, and is so important in
its far-reaching results that it alone would have stamped him as a
philosophical investigator of the highest merits, had he never done
anything else. This was his discovery of the means for developing
electricity directly from magnetism. It was made on the 29th of August,
1831, and should be regarded as inspired by the great discovery made by
Oersted in 1820, of the relations existing between the voltaic pile and
electro-magnetism. It was in the same year that Ampere had conducted
that memorable i