Notices respecting New Books. 41 



subject, in a detailed manner, to be instructive to men of business and 

 practitioners. It is evident, from the repeated instances of dreadful 

 explosions, failures, and misapplications of capital, which have hap- 

 pened (even recently), that engineers as a body are not yet suffi- 

 ciently informed on this branch of their art. Whilst on the other 

 hand, the continued success of the best engineers proves that real 

 skill does exist amongst them, and may be expected to be attainable 

 by others, with study and proper instruction. 



As a means of such instruction, the present work cannot fail to pro- 

 duce public good. 



The importance of a scientific guide to students and young prac- 

 titioners cannot require to be pointed out. Merchants, manufac 

 turers, and men of business, who must call in the aid of engineers to 

 construct engines and apply steam power for them, may easily gather 

 as much knowledge from such a work as will enable them to dis- 

 tinguish between those who are competent to execute what is re- 

 quired, and others who will be likely to lead them into similar errors 

 to those by which so many have suffered. And it will be a most im- 

 portant aid to practical engineers, in directing those studies by which 

 they may render themselves competent to execute what they under- 

 take. 



At present, many who are well acquainted with the mechanical 

 structure of steam-engines, and are even accustomed to make them 

 in established forms which they have copied from others, have only very 

 imperfect and even incorrect notions of their operations when in use ; 

 they are in the condition in which a physician would be who had only 

 studied the anatomical structure of dead animals, without much know- 

 ledge of the physiology and pathology of their living functions. Such 

 engineers often succeed very well in their ordinary business, and ac- 

 quire a reputation which their knowledge will scarcely bear out, when 

 they are required to depart from their established models, and make 

 such modifications of their parts as is necessary for applying steam 

 power to new purposes. 



To obtain these useful results from a publication, it must be com- 

 posed with great care by a practitioner of competent knowledge and 

 experience $ for a self-sufficient guide in an unknown road would be 

 worse than no guide at all : and but little could be expected from 

 literary men, who can have no other acquaintance with the subject 

 than what they may acquire in collecting information from others, 

 merely for the purposes of publication. 



Mere descriptions of steam-engines will not prove of any very great 

 utility, even if accurate, and however they may be elucidated by draw- 

 ings of such extent as can be added to any publication : for to general 

 readers such descriptions will prove tediously minute, and to practical 

 men they will afford no information which is not already habitually 

 imprinted in their memory. To form an instructive guide, the de- 

 scriptive part must be accompanied by accurate statements of the actual 

 and relative magnitudes of all the parts, and of the quantities of mat- 

 ter and of action that each part is required to possess, together with 

 such a complete development of the principles on which their opera- 



New Series. Vol. 3. No. 13. Jan. 1828. G tions 



