THE RESCUE OF FARADAY'S ELECTRO- 

 CHEMICAL RESEARCHES 



Some enthusiastic believers in the soul-saving power of edu- 

 cation and in the possibility of imparting school-learning to 

 the masses generally may have dreamt of bringing science to 

 the doors of the public at large but it has remained for Messrs. 

 Dent & Son to make the actual experiment. 



Instead of inviting some more or less obscure individual 

 to write a cheap, trashy text-book, with commendable foresight 

 they have republished, as one of the volumes in their well- 

 known Everyman s Library series, the whole of Faraday's 

 wonderful electrochemical researches communicated to the 

 Royal Society of London in the years 1833-4 and 1840 — that 

 is to say, Nos. Ill to VIII, XVI and XVII, in which the 

 foundations of electrochemical science were first laid down. 

 The reprint is from the issue in three volumes of Faraday's 

 papers published in 1839-55, in which foot-notes were added 

 to the original papers ; unfortunately the paragraphs have been 

 renumbered and dates are not attached. 



Messrs. Dent & Son have rendered an invaluable service 

 to the cause of scientific education. It is to be hoped their 

 venture will meet with the recognition and success it deserves. 



No happier choice could possibly have been made. Black's 

 short essay on Magnesia Alba (Alembic Club Reprints, No. I) 

 and these early memoirs of Faraday are the most conspicuous 

 examples of true scientific method it is possible to put before 

 the student— it is safe to say that the two books, costing to- 

 gether half a crown, are worth all the elementary text-books 

 on chemistry put together that are in use at the present day 

 in school or college. 



We would counsel every serious student of science to 

 possess the volume— to study it line by line, paragraph by 

 paragraph, if only as a model of literary style and as an ex- 

 ample of clear, incisive, logical and purposeful writing. Whoever 

 learns to appreciate the lessons of truth that are conveyed in 



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