necting Dover and Calais; while the multitudinous shipping of all countries, propelled now with the quiet rapidity of electric energy, is diverted through the great inter-ocean canal of France on the one side, or our own great Thames and Channel canal on the other.
The recent discovery of cross-electric power has precipitated us, said the president, into quite a new world of science and resource. Just when we seemed threatened with an increase of population that is to leave no room upon the world's surface for natural food-growing, this great discovery comes to our help, to turn out the required food, rapidly and cheaply, from the narrow quarters of our chemical laboratories. The cross-electric, further, in creating the great modern diamond factory (for any coal, shale, or cinder rubbish may now be rapidly and cheaply converted into hardest and purest diamond), has advanced powerfully alike our scientific, artistic, and material life. The ladies, indeed, under this new tide of cheap and boundless supply, at once turned up their fair noses in contempt for what they now designated as the vulgar flare of their previously most prized of jewels; but telescopic and microscopic science secured their great advance, while our window-light, and countless other necessities, aids, and comforts of life, came in, more or less, for the same.
