[Illustration: Dr. Fridtjof Nansen.]
[Illustration: Miss Kingsley.]
Vast engineering works, of which the Manchester Ship Canal is the
most familiar instance, have been carried on. This great waterway,
thirty-five miles long, and placing an inland town in touch with the
sea, was begun in 1887 and finished in 1894. Numerous exhibitions, at
home and abroad, have stimulated industrial and aesthetic progress;
and science has continued to advance with bewildering rapidity,
developing chiefly in practical directions. The bacteriologist has
unveiled much of the mystery of disease, showing that seed-germs
produce it; the photographer comes in aid of surgery, for the
discovery of the X or Roentgen rays, by the German professor whose
name is associated with them, now enables the surgeon to discover
foreign bodies lodged within the human frame, and to decide with
authority their position and the means of removing them. Burial
reforms, in the interests of health and economy, have been
introduced, and nursing, elevated into a science, has become an
honourable profession for cultured women. In 1894 that eminent
_savant_ Lord Rayleigh brought before the British Association his
discovery of a hitherto unknown constituent in the atmosphere.
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