on the sea weed; the glowworm and firefly held up their
light-houses before pharas or beacon-tower guided the wanderer
among men; and, as long before Phipps brought over the diving bell
to this country as the creation, spiders were making and using
airpumps to descend into the deep. Our bones were moved by tendons
and muscles long before chains and cords were made to pull heavy
weights from place to place. Nay, until quite lately--leaving these
discoveries to themselves--we took no heed of the pattern set us
in the backbone, with the arching ribs springing from it, to
construct the large cylinder which we often see now attaching all
the rest of a set of works. This has been a very modern discovery;
but, prior even to the first man, Nature had cast such a cylinder
in every ribbed and vertebrate animal she had made. The cord of
plaited iron, too, now used to drag machinery up inclined planes,
was typified in the backbone of the eels and snakes in Eden;
tubular bridges and hollow columns had been in use since the first
bird with hollow bones flew through the wood, or the first reed
waved in the wind. Strange that the principle of the Menai Straits'
railway bridge, and of the iron pillars in the Crystal Palace,
existed is the Arkite dove, and in the bulrushes that grew round
the cradle of Moses! Our railway tunnels are wonderful works of
science, but the mole tunnelled with its foot, and the pholas with
one end of its shell, before our navvies handled pick or spade upon
the heights of the iron roads: worms were prior to gimlets,
ant-lions were the first funnel makers, a beaver showed men how to
make the milldams, and the pendulous nests of certain birds swung
gently in the air before the keen wit of even the most loving
mother laid her nursling in a rocking cradle. The carpenter of
olden time lost many useful hours in studying how to make the
ball-and-socket joint which he bore about with him in his own hips
and shoulders; the universal joint, which filled all men with
wonder when first discovered, he had in his wrist; in the jaws of
all flesh-eating animals his huge one-hinge joint; in the
graminivora and herbivora the joint of free motion; for grinding
millstones were set up in our molars and in the gizzards of birds
before the Egyptian women ground th