Excerpt from The New Volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 25: Constituting in Combination With the Existing Volumes of the Ninth Edition, the Tenth Edition of That Work, and Also Supplying a New, Distinctive, and Independent Library of Reference Dealing With Recent Events and Developments Sir Archibald Geikie, on the occasion of the banquet held at Christ's College, Cam bridge, in 1888, to celebrate the issue of the twenty-fourth volume of the Ninth Edition, expressed a wish that it were possible explicitly to contrast the conditions and prospects of the world at that timewith what they had been when the eighth edition was completed in 1861, to sketch the vast realms of knowledge and of thought that had been conquered, and to enumerate even a few of the great treasures, undreamt of in variety and value, which have been added to the sum of human knowledge. Such an apposition, displaying side by side the state of human knowledge in 1880 and its present state, would yield an even more striking lesson. Within these twenty years - and as we have seen, the period corered by the new volumes is in fact much longer - there have been astounding changes in all departments: political, social, economic, religious, scientific, literary, and artistic. Political frontiers have been altered by wars and conventions; the British Empire has vastly increased in vitality as well as in extent; America, recovered from the shock of her Civil War, has become a world-power as well as an industrial factor of the first import once; Germany, since the franco-prussian War, has become another industrial competitor; France has made extraordinary efforts to regain lost ground; and in the Far East, Japan has attained an unforeseen importance. The chief postulates of all branches of inquiry have been revolutionized by the widespread application of the theory of evolution and of new methods of research, while the application of science to the arts has enlarged our Vision and led to new inventions in every sphere of life. Preventive medicine and aseptic 8lll'gery have come into existence and been matured; literary and artistic produc tion has increased with almost unexampled rapidity, and much of this increase has been Wholesome and deserves attention; great men and women have passed away, leaving PM Va to the enlightenment of posterity, and new personalities of commanding npol'tflnce have come to the front. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.