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of the lowest vertebrata attained a much greater bulk than has descended to their more highly organised living representatives, and in like manner a diminution on the size of machines has often attended their development and progress. Take the watch, for example; examine its beautiful structure; observe the intelligent play of the minute members which compose it: yet this little creature is but a development of the cumbrous clocks that preceded it; it is no deterioration from them. The day might come when clocks, which certainly at the present time are not diminishing in bulk, would be superseded owing to the universal use of watches, in which case they would become as extinct as ichthyosauri, while the watch, whose tendency has for some years been to decrease in size rather than the contrary, would remain the only existing type of an extinct race.

"But returning to the argument, I would repeat that I should fear none of the existing machines so long as they were wisely handled, and not suffered to progress further; what I do fear is the extraordinary rapidity with which they are becoming something very different to what they are at present. No class of beings have in any time past made so rapid a movement forward. Should not that movement be jealously watched, and checked before we find ourselves in a false position and unable to check it? And is it not necessary for this end to destroy the more advanced of the machines which are in use at present, though it be admitted that they are in themselves harmless?

"As yet the machines receive their impressions through the agency of man's senses: one travelling