THE lecturer commenced by referring to the stagnation of trade, to the various remedies that had been proposed to relieve it and to the fact that while some were maintaining and others stoutly denying that commercial depression could be cured by legislation, we were too apt to forget that there existed a means by which, without lessening the wage of the workman or the profit of the master, the cost of production could be diminished, prices lowered, and the failing trade of England resuscitated. He next considered the consumption of coal for various purposes yearly in Sheffield, and showed that, although the price of coal in that town was very low, being only five shillings per ton for steam coal, the total annual cost for Sheffield alone must be something like 790,000l. Actual instances were then given of great saving being effected by water-power being employed on a large scale for doing mechanical work. Contrasted with this, calculation showed that at the Falls of Niagara as much power was wasted as could be produced by the total present annual consumption of coal throughout the whole world. And when it was remembered that there existed in the world other waterfalls besides Niagara, that we had also innumerable rapidly-flowing rivers, the important fact, well known to scientific men, but one which it was so difficult to induce the world at large to grasp, stared us in the face—that we obtained in a laborious way from the depths of the earth the power we employed, and we let run to waste, every hour of our lives, many, many times as much as we used.