4 Sketch of the Life of 



could attain to render it at once amusing and instructive, was 

 done. This edition of 1500 copies (the smallest that he ever 

 printed) was pubhshed in May, 1806, and sold so rapidly as 

 to make a second necessary in October, 1807. From that 

 period to the present, the demand has been incessant, eleven 

 editions having been called for within eighteen years ; none 

 of them were mere reprints, Mr. Parkes having always mate- 

 rially altered and enlarged them, and indeed several were 

 almost rewritten. The sale abroad has kept pace with that at 

 home, and copies have been transmitted to the author of edi- 

 tions published in several of the States of North America, in 

 various parts of Germany, in France, Spain, and Russia. 



Perceiving how much a still more elementary work was 

 required, particularly by schools and young persons, which 

 might by its bulk and price be easily accessible to all classes 

 of readers, he wrote the Rudiments of Chemistry, in which 

 the arrangement of the Catechism is preserved, and indeed 

 the whole of the substance of the text, the catechetical form 

 being, for the sake of brevity, dispensed with, as are also the 

 notes and tables ; the principal facts and axioms are printed 

 in a large type, and under each, in a smaller letter, the expe- 

 riments and illustrations necessary to elucidate them. He 

 published the first edition in 1809, and so much was a book 

 of this nature wanted, and with such avidity was it received, 

 that, in the autumn of 1825, a fourth edition was called for; 

 besides which, it has been reprinted in New York and Phila- 

 delphia. 



His other principal work is the Chemical Essays, which 

 were written in furtherance of the great object of which he 

 never lost sight, viz., the application of chemical science to 

 the arts and manufactures of the country ; they have passed 

 through two editions, and have been repubUshed in France and 

 elsewhere. The essays are on various subjects, and contain 

 detailed accounts of all the processes employed in many of 

 those manufactures which are most dependent on a correct 

 knowledge of the principle of chemistry : he takes every 

 opportunity of suggesting improvements in the different 

 methods of procedure, and had the satisfaction of hearing that 

 many manufacturers had profited by his suggestions, the adop- 



