BY ALEXANDER JAMIESON, Author of the Grammars of Rhetoric and Polite Literature; Logic Geography, &c. &c. LONDON: PRINTED FOR G. & W. B. WHITTAKER, PREFACE. THE object of these Volumes is to conduct the Student through a scientific course, in a safe and easy mean between the two extremes of turgid brevity on the one hand, and verbose digression on the other. And to accomplish this desirable end, a selection has been made of those branches of scientific knowledge, which presented the greatest variety of instructive facts, and popular experiments. But to blend amusement with instruction the fine arts have been resorted to, and the whole range of manufactures which have received improvements from modern discoveries in chemical science, has been ransacked to present to the reader whatever was curious and deserving attention. By the exclusion of irrelevant matter, the Author has been enabled to dwell more at length on subjects of greater interest, and to introduce, many articles that have never been offered to youth in a popular and inviting form, as also of incorporating with the explanatory matter, such historical facts and anecdotes connected with the text as seemed most |