PREFACE. 



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HE practice of writing a few lines by way 

 of Preface to the volume of a magazine 

 gives an Editor the opportunity of draw- 

 ing more familiarly near to his readers. 

 It feels to him as if he were giving an 

 account of his stewardship. The year is at 

 an end, another volume swells the list of its predecess- 

 ors, and, even whilst he writes, the Editor is already 

 nursing the scarcely-born infant which he anticipates 

 will outstrip its brethren. It is with some satisfaction 

 he feels that he has been able to retrieve his promise 

 made in the last Preface he wrote (such a short year 

 ago !) to improve SciENCE-GossiP by articles from 

 ^\■cll-known and able pens. 



Each year makes scientific editing a more difficult task. Science 

 is so extending her borders, that brevity in alluding to her discoveries 

 has become an art. The magnificence of the Organic world was 

 never so prominently brought before mankind as in our own time. 

 In writing the history of the intellectual activity of the latter part 

 of the nineteenth century, the future historian (if he be capable for 

 the task) will be obliged to draw attention to the vigorous pursuit of 

 Natural Science, and the sudden leap to a higher platform of 

 Philosophical Speculation which was its natural result. 



All this we feel even more than we can express. To chronicle 

 the progress of science in such a way as we have attempted in 

 this volume is not effected without much anxiety to the chronicler. 



