engineers, affect a contempt for the higher branches of science, and
assert, in a very positive and self-sufficient manner that experiments
made in a study or laboratory are on too trifling and small a scale to
be practically relied upon; that a tin kettle or a saucepan is a very
different thing to the boiler of a steam engine.

This may be so in one sense, but the same chemical forces which operate
upon the one will be just as active in a proportionate degree in their
action upon the other. It was said by Aristotle that the laws of the
universe are best observed in the most insignificant objects; for the
same physical causes which hold together the stupendous frame of the
universe may be recognized even in a drop of rain. The same observation
may be applied to the laws of heat in all their ramifications; for,
after all, our experiments are, in many instances but defective copies
of what is continually going on in the great workshop of nature.

It would be needless to insist on the wasteful and destructive effects
produced by the exposure of boiler surfaces to the open atmosphere.
Such a practice can be neither supported by experience nor justified by
analogy; and it is to be hoped that it may before long be consigned to
the limbo of antiquated absurdities and be satisfactorily forgotten.
Seeing that it cannot with any show of reason be affirmed that the
boiler covering materials in present use possess the requirements
necessary to recommend them; the question arises as to what is the best
means of achieving the object required. This is an inquiry which it is
the office of time alone to answer. As the problem is obviously one of
primary importance, and well worthy of the attention of inventors, it
is hazarding nothing to predict its satisfactory solution at no distant
date.