752 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



eagerly accepted.* I do not remember the date of Parker's accept- 

 ance, but the book had not begun to go to press in the summer 

 months ; the printing actually took place in the following winter. 

 One of the first results of our conversations was that he gave me the 

 manuscript to peruse. During my stay I read and discussed with him 

 the whole of it. 



The impression made upon me by the work was, as may be sup- 

 posed, very profound. I knew pretty well the works that could be 

 ranked as its precursors in inductive logic, but the difference between 

 it and them was obviously vast. The general impression at first over- 

 powered my critical faculties ; and it was some time before I could 

 begin to pick holes. I remember, among the first of my criticisms, 

 remarking on the chapter on " Things denoted by Names " as not 

 being very intelligible ; I had at the same time a difficulty in seeing 

 its place in the scheme, although I did not press this objection. The 

 effect was that he revised the chapter, and introduced the subordinate 

 headings, which very much lightened the burden of its natural ab- 

 struseness. 



The main defect of the work, however, was in the experimental 

 examples. I soon saw, and he felt, as much as I did, that these were 

 too few and not unfrequently incorrect. It was on this point that I 

 was able to render the greatest service. Circumstances had made me 

 tolerably familiar with the experimental physics, chemistry, and physi- 

 ology of that day, and I set to work to gather examples from all avail- 

 able sources. Liebig's books on the application of chemistry had then 

 just appeared, and contained many new and striking facts and reason- 

 ings, which we endeavored to turn to account : although at the present 

 day some of those inductions of his have lost their repute. An Aber- 

 deen lecturer on chemistry, the late Dr. John Shier (chemist to the 

 colony of Demerara) went carefully over with me all the chemical 

 examples, and struck out various erroneous statements. I had recently 

 made a study of Faraday's very stiff papers on electricity, and from 

 these I extracted one generalization, somewhat modified by myself, 

 and this Mill prized very highly ; nevertheless, it was afterward carped 

 at by Whewell, as going beyond what Faraday would have allowed. 

 One way or other, I gave him a large stock of examples to choose 

 from, as he revised the third book for the press. The difficulty that 

 was most felt was to get good examples of the purely experimental 

 methods. He had availed himself of the famous research on dew 

 adduced by Herschel. There was hardly to be got any other example 

 so good. For one of his later editions I gave him the example from 



* So great a work can sustain even a little anecdote. Parker, in intimating bis wil- 

 lingness to publish the book, sent the opinion of his referee, in the writer's own hand, 

 withholding the name. " He forgot," said Mill, " that I had been an editor, and knew 

 the handwriting of nearly every literary man of the day." The referee was Dr. W. 

 Cooke Taylor, who afterward was one of the reviewers of the book. 



