PREFACE. 



THIS book supplies a growing want of these busy times, when 

 so many of us are prevented by the struggles of business from 

 sitting down to the consecutive systematic study of a formal 

 treatise. 



I have kept this demand steadily in view throughout, by select- 

 ing subjects which are likely to be interesting to all readers who 

 are sufficiently intelligent to prefer sober fact to sersational fiction, 

 but who, at the same time, do not profess to be scientific specialists. 



In the writing of these papers my highest literary ambition has 

 always been to combine clearness and simplicity with some attempt 



" ! 



at philosophy. 



W. M. W. 



WILLESDEN, September, 1882. 



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