Great inventions, like the founding of great States, have been accomplished only after much heroic sacrifice and high and persistent endeavor. Everything that is great and noble is difficult of accomplishment, and, looking at the perfection of mechanism embodied in the steam engine of to-day and contemplating the marvellous results that its use has accomplished in the grand march of civilization, it is seemingly strange that so little attention is given to the early history and development of the wonderful machine that has opened up the trackless wildernesses of the world and brought the ends of the earth together. Men who have by force or fraud changed a dynasty, or have led their fellow-men from one system of government to another, have their effigies set up in bronze, while men, the real bene

factors of their kind, who have by harnessing the mysterious forces of nature made the world one grand commonwealth, have their names relegated to forgetfulness, as if they had lived and moved and had their benignant being in some remote planet.

The use of steam as a motive power has been claimed by various nations, but the unquestioned continued useful employment of it, and almost all of the improvements made upon it, must be attributed largely to British and latterly to American ingenuity. Hero of Alexandria, who flourished 284-221 B.C., a celebrated mathematician and natural philosopher, a most original and inventive genius, constructed a great number of machines, mostly, however, as toys rather than for the purpose of applying them to any useful purpose, chief

among which was "Hero's Fountain," a steam engine whereby a vessel vessel was caused to revolve by jets of steam issuing from lateral holes in the arms with which it was provided, similar to many of the contrivances used in the display of fireworks at the present day.

In the works that remain to us of this eminent man, a number of other machines are described, among which is a water-pump supposed to have been used as a fire-engine. Many of the curious machines described by Hero are believed to be the work of other inventors who flourished previous to the time of this remarkable man.

The next we hear of the application of steam was by Blasco de Garay, Spanish captain, who, in 1530, exhibited in the harbor of Barcelona a steamboat of his own invention. It was said to have had revolving paddles acting on principle of Hero's Fountain, but there is no evidence of any particular improvement or of his steamboat being received as other than a mere mechanical curiosity. In 1615, Sol. de Caus, a German engineer, in the service of the Elector Palatine at Heidelberg, describes a steam machine which he invented and which was used for forcing water to a higher level by applying heat. In 1629, G. Branca, an Italian engineer, invented a steam engine, in which the steam, after being generated in a boiler, was directed by a spout against the flat vanes of a wheel which was thus set in motion. The idea of raising water by the pressure of steam was introduced into England by the Marquis of Worcester in 1655. In his Cen ury of Inventions he describes a steam apparatus by which he raised a column of water to the height of 40 feet.

The first patent for the application of steam power to various kinds of machines was taken out in 1698 by Captain Savery. He was the first to conceive the idea of having the boiler separate from the vessel in which the steam did its work. His engines were used for some years in the drainage of mines in Cornwall and Devonshire, England.

He first made use of the condensation of steam in a closed vessel to create a vacuum, and thus raise the water to a certain height, after which the

steam pressing upon its surface was made to raise the water still further in a second vessel.

Savery's pumping engine was improved upon by Dr. Papin, a celebrated French engineer, to whom we are indebted for the first practical application of the piston. In all previous construction of pumping engines, the steam acted directly upon the water to be moved without the use of any intervening part.

The next engineer of note to develop the possibilities of steam power was Newcomen, who, in conjunction with Savery and another engineer named Cawley, conjointly produced what was known as the atmospheric engine, and which held its own for over 70 years, and was extensively used in raising water in mining operations. In this important improvement the previous inventions were all utilized, the separate boiler, the movable steam-tight piston, with the addition of a beam attached by a flexible rod to the piston. The “beam” which has ever since been used on pumping engines and also on many kinds of marine engines marked an important advance in steam power. The admission of steam under the piston, and also the condensation of steam, was made an instantaneous process, instead of a slow and gradual one as formerly. Weights were suspended to the pump-end of the beam, which aided in raising the piston to the full length of the cylinder when the steam was shut off, followed by a sudden jet of cold water in the air-tight cylinder which producing a vacuum the atmosphere acting on the outer exposed side, forced it to the lower end of the cylinder, bringing with it the end of the beam to which the rod was attached and raising the other end along with the pump rod. The cock was then turned to admit fresh steam below the piston, which was raised by the counterpoise and thus the motion began anew. The opening and shutting of the cocks was at first perfomed by an attendant, but subsequenty a boy named Humphrey Potter, to save the trouble of constant personal superintendence, devised a system of strings and levers whereby the engine was made to open and shut its own valves.

In 1717, Henry Beighten, an engineer, invented a simple system of gearing which rendered the engine completely self-acting.

The next and most important advance in the power of the steam engine was made in 1769, when James Watt, a mathematical instrument maker in Greenock, Scotland, patented the improvement of a separate condenser. Watt had observed that the jet of cold water thrown into the cylinder to condense the steam reduced the temperature of the cylinder so much that the greater part of the force of the new admission of steam was lost by condensation before the cylinder got back the heat lost by the admission of each jet of cold water. This loss was SO great that only about one-fourth of became available as a motive power. Watt conceived the idea of using a separate vessel for condensation which could be kept constantly in a state of vacuum. Other improvements rapidly followed, so that in a few years the wasteful, slow-moving, almost useless, pumping machine became transformed practically to what the steam engine is to-day. The changes made since Watt's time have been along the lines of application and adaptability, and the steamboat, the steam-hammer, and even the locomotive, are merely the natural and inevitable use of Watt's marvellous machine to the ever-widening wants of modern civilization. Previously to Watt's masterly inventions the generation of steam had been used almost entirely for the pumping of water. Watt demonstrated the illimitable adaptability of steam power, and produced the first example of the modern steam engine almost complete in every detail in 1786. The Albion Mills, near Blackfriars' Bridge, London, were fitted with two of Watt's engines in that year. In those engines Watts produced a rotary motion by the use of a connecting rod and crank. He regulated the admission of steam by the use of the governor whereby the opening of the steam valves is increased or diminished automatically. He applied the steam pressure to both ends of the piston, regulating the supply and release of steam to the condenser

by the use of sliding valves. To these great improvements he latterly added an indicator showing the pressure of steam in the cylinders during the stroke of the piston, and which, with little change, is still in use. In brief, in the science of mechanism, in the application of a new world power, James Watt was a creator in the highest order of genius. The visionary dreams of the poets are idle in the presence of his Titanic power that has annihilated time and space. His mighty invention walks the water like a thing of life. It passes from land to land. Its triumphant pathways are marked with a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Tireless, it has relieved humanity of half the burdens of life. Watt's engine is more than a help to toiling millions, it is a benediction.

THE DERIVATION OF DOLL.

From the London Chronicle.

The derivation of "doll," about which a correspondent inquired, was for long doubtful. Even now, though the Oxford Dictionary explains the word as short for Dorothy, thus agreeing with Lloyd's and the Century Dictionary, the latest edition of Chambers still quotes Skeat. The best of English philologists suggests the Old Dutch "dol," a whipping top. The Century gives the analogous "jack" as the name of a toy. And it gives up the old derivation of doll as an abbreviation of idol as certainly wrong. Trench says that the word did not come into use until after Dryden. Mr. Canton, in his fascinating book of "Children's Sayings," has an interesting reference to the origin of the name "doll." "The doll is one of the best teachers of a child," he says, "and it is one of the happy chances of language that the very name 'dolly' carries us back to St. Dorothea (God's gift) and her beautiful rose legend. 'Dorothy,' writes Miss Yonge, in her 'History of Christian Names,' 'was once one of the most usual of English names, and 'dolly' was so constantly heard in every household that it finally became the generic term for the wooden children that at least as late as the infancy of Elizabeth Stuart were called babies or puppets.'"

On the further side of the bold and rocky promotory which supports the northern extremity of the great Forth Bridge there nestles a gentle, sunlit bay, with a ruined castle on its western arm, and bearing a name as pleasant as itself "St. Margaret's Hope."

A forgotten spot for well-nigh two centuries, left to itself utterly until the bridge of late years brought holidayseekers in its wake, it yet, by its name and its crumbling ruin alike, speaks mutely of a stirring historic past. And now from their dream of oblivion. Castle and Hope have awakened again to find themselves most marvellously famous, their names a nations's business, their site a nation's property, their doom, alas! a nation's necessity. For already the deeds are signed, the contracts made, which must transform this idyllic little corner of Fife into a clanging centre of Briton's naval defence.

To those who have known Rosyth and St. Margaret's Hope in their unknown days, and have loved their charm of peace and solitude, there is

a certain pathos in wandering by their shores at present; idly conjuring up the storied past and the strange undreamed-of future.

The fiat has gone forth, but as yet little trace of its working is visible; and as we watch the sun sink behind the Ochils, gilding the wavelets of a receding tide, and lighting up the grim, square outline of the castle as it stands silhouetted against the western sky, we have a vision of the time to be-when the clear waters of the Hope shall be soiled with the defilements of traffic; when its grassy knowes shall wither into a wilderness of wharfs, and piers, and sheds, and harbour works; when a forest of "ironclads" shall diminish even the marvels of the monster bridge. Churches. schools, libraries, hospitals marshal themselves like prophetic ghosts before the mind's eye; springing up in prosperous phalanx, triumphing in uncompromising symmetry of stone and lime, and even in Utopian climax of a "garden city," where erstwhile only a few sheep browsed unheeded, where