Page:Sunbeams extracted from cucumbers.djvu/14

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"busy body in other men's matters" might ask, if it was intended that men should fly through the air, why were they not made with feathers and wings, and especially why are there so many who are justly called Heavy moulded men?

Another class of the literati of our age, scorning to travel either on the sea, or on the land, or in the air, have constructed a submarine boat or diving machine, by which they were constantly groping among shark, sturgeon and sea-horses. To say nothing of the hazard which these gentlemen encounter of running on rocks or shoals, or of being left in the lurch, on the bottom of the sea, by a leak, may we not wonder that they were not made with fins and scales, and may they not esteem themselves very fortunate that they have hitherto escaped being cut up to be made into oil?

These are a few among many modern inventions. All the principles of these various machines are capable of defence, and the inventors are all great, and learned, and ingenious men. Yet, strange as it may seem, the stupid, foolish, plodding people of this and other countries, still keep their oxen and their horses—their carriages are still made as they were an hundred years ago, and our coasters will still go to New-York on the surface of the sound, instead of sinking to the bottom or rising into the clouds—and they still prefer a fair wind and tide to the greatest profusion of steam, produced in the most scientific manner.

This species of enterprise, and this spirit of learning, has entered deeply into the business of agriculture. Discoveries have been made which have rendered sowing and reaping unnecessary. The plow, harrow, spade, hoe, sickle and scythe, have undergone a thorough change, on mathematical princi-