Lectures on popular and scientific subjects

by 14th earl of James Sinclair Caithness

WRITTEN NOV. 20, 1875, AT STAGENHOE PARK.

The subject and treatment, as well as title, of this Lecture are suggested by the answer of the hostess at a Scottish inn to an English tourist, who was inquisitive to know the composition of a dish which she offered him, and which she called Hodge-Podge. "There's water intilt," she said, "there's mutton intilt, there's pease intilt, there's leeks intilt, there's neeps intilt, and sometimes somethings else intilt." The analysis was an exhaustive one, and the intelligence displayed by the landlady was every way worthy of the shrewdness indigenous to her country; but her answer was not so lucid to her listener as to herself, as appeared by his bewildered looks, and his further half-despairing interrogatory. "But what is intilt?" said he, impatiently striking in before she had well finished. "Haven't I been tellin' ye what's intilt?" she replied. And she began the enumeration again, only with longer pause and greater emphasis at every step, as if she were enlightening a slow apprehension,—"There's water intilt, there's mutton intilt;" quietly and self-complacently adding, as she finished, "Ye surely ken now what's intilt." Whether her guest now understood her meaning, or whether he had to succumb, contented with his ignorance, we are not informed; but few of my readers need to be told that "intilt" is a Scotch provincialism for "into it," and that the landlady meant by using it to signify that the particulars enumerated entered as constituents into her mysterious dish.

My aim is to discourse on the same constituents as they display their virtues and play their parts on a larger scale, in a wider economy; and when I have said my say, I hope I may be able to lay claim to the credit of having spoken intelligibly and profitably, though I must at the outset bespeak indulgence by promise of nothing more than the serving up of a dish of simple hodge-podge. The question I put in a wider reference is the question of the Englishman, as expressed in the Scotchwoman's dialect, What's intilt? and I assume that there enter into it, as radically component parts, at least the ingredients of this motley soup. Into the large hodge-podge of nature and terrestrial economics, as into this small section of Scotch cookery, there enter the element of water, the flesh of animals, and the fruits of the earth, as well as the processes by which these are brought to hand and rendered serviceable to life. The ingredients of hodge-podge exist in rerum natura, and the place they occupy and the function they fulfil in it are no less deserving of our inquisitive regard.

Thus, there is water in it, without which there were no seas and no sailing of ships, no rivers and no plying of mills, no vapour and no power of steam, no manufacture and no trade, and not only no motion, but no growth and no life. There is mutton, or beef, in it, and connected therewith the breeding and rearing of cattle, the production of wool, tallow, and leather, and the related manufactures and crafts. There are turnips and carrots in it, the latter of such value to the farmer that on one occasion a single crop of them sufficed to clear off a rent; and the former of such consequence in the fattening of stock and the provision of animal food, that a living economist divides society exhaustively into turnip-producing classes and turnip-consuming. There are leeks and onions in it, and these, with the former, suggest the art of the gardener, and the wonderful processes by which harsh and fibrous products can be turned into pulpy and edible fruits. And there are pease and barley in it, and associated therewith the whole art of the husbandman in the tillage of the soil and the raising of cereals, with the related processes of grinding the meal, baking the bread, preparing the malt, brewing the beer, and distilling the fiery life-blood at the heart.

Now, to discourse on all these, as they deserve, would be a task of no ordinary magnitude, but the subject is an interesting one, and to treat of it ever so cursorily might not unprofitably occupy a reflective moment or two. Water is the first topic it is laid upon me to talk about, and I begin with it all the more readily because it suggests a sense of freshness, and thoughts which may float our enterprise prosperously into port.

I. Water, as already hinted, is an element of vast account in the economy of nature, and is a recreation to the heart and a delight to the eye of both man and beast. To have a plentiful supply of it is one of the greatest blessings of God to the creature, and to be able to bestow it wisely and employ it usefully is one of the most serviceable of human arts. It is too valuable a servant to suffer to go idle, and many are the offices it might do us, if, as it travels from the mountains to the sea-board, we caught it in its course, harnessed it to our chariot, and guided it to our aim. We should turn it to account every inch of its progress, and compel it, as it can, to minister to our requirements by its irresistible energy. Its merely mechanical power is immense, and this is due in great part to its incompressibility; for it is in virtue of this quality alone we can, by means of it, achieve feats not otherwise feasible. How else could we have raised to its sublime height that stupendous bridge which spans the Menai Straits, and which is the wonder of the beholder, as it is the boast of the designer? It stands where it does by the help of some mechanism indeed, but the true giant that lifted it on his shoulders and bore it to its airy elevation was the incompressible force of water, a fluid which is, strangely, the simple product of the combination of two elastic transparent gases, oxygen and hydrogen, neither of which apart has the thew and sinew of its offspring. Nay, it is this single element, which, acted on by heat or acting through machinery, fetches and carries for us over the wide globe, and is fast weaving into one living web the far-scattered interests of the world.

Water was in primitive times utilised into a motive power by the help of a mechanism of rude design, which yet is hardly out of date, and might recently be seen in its original, still more in modified form, in certain back-quarters of civilisation. A stream, guided by a sluice, was made to play upon four vertical paddle-blades, attached to a shaft which they caused to revolve, and which moved a millstone, resting upon another through which it passed. It was a primitive mill, which superseded the still more primitive hand-mill, or quern; and I myself have seen it at work in the Shetland Islands, and even the north of Scotland, though it is now done away with even there, still more farther south, and its place supplied and its work done by overshot and under-shot wheel-gear, and improved machinery attached, of less or more complexity. One of the most recent improvements is the Turbine, a sort of Barker's mill; it is of great power, small compass, and acts under a good fall with a minimum expenditure of water-power.

Passing from the consideration of water as a motive power in its natural state, I ask you to notice briefly the gigantic force it can be made to develop under the action of heat. In its normal form the power of water is due, as I have said, to its incompressibility; in the state of vapour, to which it is reduced by heat, its power is due to the counter force of expansion. It was when confined as a state prisoner in the Tower of London that the Marquis of Worcester began to speculate on the possibilities of steam, though he little dreamed of its more important applications, and the incalculable services it might be made to render to the cause of humanity. Suddenly, one day, his musings in his solitude were interrupted by the rattling of the lid of a kettle, which was boiling away on the fire beside him, when, being of a philosophic vein, he commenced to inquire after the cause; and he soon reasoned himself into the conclusion that the motive power lay in the tension of the vapour, and that the maintenance of this must be due to successive additions of heat. The thought was a seed sown in a fit soil, for it led to experiments which confirmed the supposition, and inaugurated others that have borne fruit, as we see. It was a great moment in the annals of discovery, and from that time to this the genius of improvement has moved onward with unprecedented strides; and this in the application of steam-power as well as the results, stupendous as these last have been. For as there is no department of industry that has not made immense advances since, none on which steam has not directly or indirectly been brought to bear with effect; so there has been no end to the ingenuity and ingenious devices by which steam has been coaxed into subjection to human use and made the pliant minister of the master, man. All these results follow as a natural consequence from the first discovery of its motive power by the Marquis of Worcester, and the subsequent invention of James Watt, by which the force detected was rendered uniform, instead of fitful and spasmodic, as it had been before. And yet, important as was the discovery of the one, and ingenious as is the invention of the other, both are of slight account in the presence of the great fact of nature observed by the English nobleman and humoured by the Scottish artisan. The genie whom the one captured and the other tamed, is the great magic worker, apart from whose subtle strength their ingenuity had been wasted, and had come to naught.

But here I must restrain my rovings, and recall my purpose to descant on other points. And indeed the uses of water are so numerous and varied that the subject might well engross a lecture by itself; and I must needs therefore cut the matter short. It is only Hodge-Podge, moreover, I have undertaken to dish up before you, and I must keep my word. For, fain as I am to dilate on the many economic virtues of water, I must not forget that the pot contains other ingredients, and that the dish I am serving out of it would yield but poor fare, if it did not.

2. I come therefore to the next ingredient in the soup I am providing; for, as the housewife said, "there's mutton intilt," and it is the most important ingredient in the mess. But the animal which produces it, like the kindred animals that produce the like, serves other purposes as well, and these no less essential to the exigency of the race; and it is of them I propose to speak. It is beside my design to enter on the domain of the sheep-breeder, and attempt an account of the different kinds reared by the farmer; enough to say that, numerous as these are, they are all fed and tended for the benefit of the human family, and that they minister to the supply of the same human wants.