284                 HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY

superseded the more tardy modes of transit. You need not be told
the history nor the magic wonders of the telegraph nor of the power
press, nor of the success of the ocean steamer. They are the world
propellers and wonder workers of today. In the sciences and arts,
in the ethics of a christian world, in the comity of civil and com-
mercial intercourse of all the nations of the globe—in the higher and
more liberal codes of international law and extradition treaties—in
the wonderful advance of the laws of human hygiene, materia med—
ica, and surgery—in the great diffusion of learning and knowledge
among the toiling masses of humanity everywhere, dispelling
ignorance and superstition, improving our philosophy and bright-
ening, beautifying, and making, more hopeful our religion, the
march of progress has been no less wonderful.
    If we look into the starry heavens, there, too, we find that the
disciples of Gallileo, Kepler and Laplace have been busy. Leverri-
er has given us another one of the major planets with its satellite
far, far beyond Uranus. To the six asteroids of my school boy days,
that lie in the plane between Mars and Jupiter, a host of dscoverers
have steadily added others, until now, they number about one hun-
dred and fifty little worlds, each about the size of our moon, and
nearly all unknown, save to our own age and time. Of the other
more complex discoveries and measurements in the sidereal heavens
made in this century, I forbear to speak here. The researches of
the chemist have been equally marvelous and successful. They have
unlocked the arcana of nature and found out the subtile combina—
tions of the simple substances and their combining quantities in
almost every tangible form of matter. These discoveries are utilized
in the arts and, whether in the iron smelting cupola, in the convert—
ing of iron into steel, in the gas generating retort, or in the manip—
ulating of petroleum into its several utilized parts, we find in each
and all a chemical laboratory. Chemical preparations, aided by the
chemical action of concentrated light through the camera, give us
our various sun pictures. Yet more daring have others been.
Within a little more than a decade of years have scientists, with a
combination of prisms, divided light into its several primitive colors
and turned them on the sensitive picture plate, and there caught and
fixed them, and now, by this process, do they analyze the light of
the planets and fixed stars, and tell you the gases that burn today
on yonder molten blazing sun. So far has scientific research gone
in this wonderful century of ours that men now view the ever recur-
ring terrific cyclones of molten matter and flaming gases on the
face of the sun, as we do the passing storm on our own planet.
    Our farms have been doubled and trebled in many localities—
old farms enlarged and improved; our modes of farming have been
improved; all of the best farm machinery has been extensively
brought into use, save the steam plow; better breeds of domestic
animals have added immensely to our wealth, yet much remains to
be done. The great glacial avalanche has given us a surface cover-
ing, on the uplands, of comminuted clays, and ground sands of
ten to twenty feet in depth, securing us a very valuable and uniform
agricultural soil. The deep and broad denudation of Eel river and
the smaller streams have done ample surface drainage in most
localities, and given a great amount of alluvial bottom lands, unex