UPON NATURAL HISTORY, GEOLOGY, CHEMISTRY, THE APPLICATION OF STEAM, AND INTERESTING DISCOVERIES IN THE ARTS. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1833, By LILLY, WAIT, COLMAN, AND HOLDEN, In the Clerk's office of the District Court of Massachusetts. PREFACE. IN so extensive a field as this work opens, offering a condensed view of the prevalent systems and leading facts in science, it cannot be expected, that I should presume to offer claims to general originality. The text book, which I have chiefly followed, is a French work, 'Lettres a Sophie,' in 4 volumes 12mo, 9th edition, 1825, Paris; by Aimé Martin; and what is taken from that work is rather compilation and paraphrase, than exact translation. I have wholly omitted more than half the matter, a considerable part of which is in French verse, scarcely translatable into our language. Many of the opinions and doctrines of the author have yielded to more recent experiment and observation. I have been neither an incurious, nor indolent observer of nature myself; and, in pursuing his themes, I have interposed my own correlative remarks, wherever I thought I could offer additional illustration; and for the style and manner, I alone am answerable. The author of these letters himself compiled from Bacon, Descartes, Newton, Herschell, Lavoisier, Buffon, Fontenelle, Linneus, Spallanzani, St Pierre, Chateaubriand, Patrin, and numerous naturalists, voyagers and travellers. This work contains a synopsis of their best thoughts upon their favorite subjects. I will add in this connection, that, where I have not been able to find any corresponding names in English for the French names of animals and plants, I have given the scientific Latin names. The circumstance of becoming interested in the history of an animal or a plant, with an unknown name, may induce the student to repair to a dictionary of natural history; and he may thus be unconsciously led to more thorough and scientific acquaintance with the subject. I have thrown the scientific axioms and doctrines, connected with the point in discussion into a tabular form, not with a view to a show of learning, which I would have gladly avoided; but that the reader may see in one view, the leading propositions, which books of physics and natural history propose to develop, and demonstrate, or illustrate in detail. In selecting these doctrines, I have consulted the most recent and approved authorities, among which I may mention Fischer's Elements of Philosophy, and his works upon Physics. In compiling the Geological part, I have chiefly kept Bakewell and Buckland in view; and I have ventured upon some further observations, the result of my own surveys of our country. For the letters on the application of steam, so far as the principles of the power and the mode of the application are concerned, I have found my authorities in Dr Lardner's small, popular work upon that subject. The lectures on Political Economy were based on Blake's Conversations on that subject. It would be useless to cite all the sources, to which I have repaired for information, to furnish a sketch of the history of the more interesting inventions. These lectures turn upon those points of science and natural history, which are the most common and interesting topics of discussion in Lyceums, and of conversation in the more intellectual circles of society. But a small proportion of our young men, and none of our young ladies receive a complete academic education. They will all wish to possess |