OF THE VOLUMES. 285 



are American though there are abundance of still un- 

 analysed substances upon which those qualified to ana 

 lyse may, for many years to come, be far more pro 

 fitably employed for the benefit of rnineralogical science. 

 And the same spirit occasionally appears in these volumes 

 of the New York Natural History. The author of the 

 volumes on Scientific Agriculture, for example, has pled 

 for the analysis, organic and inorganic, of every species 

 of cultivated grain, root, and fruit, simply because it is of 

 New York State growth ; and thus, on the analysis of 

 those vegetables which are best known, to which most 

 had been done in Europe already, a vast amount of 

 labour has been expended, for the devotion of which to 

 other less known productions science would have been 

 abundantly grateful. 



Not that this comparatively useless labour would have 

 been unworthily expended had the analyses, made and 

 published, been performed more carefully or by better 

 methods than those which we previously possessed. We 

 may safely look upon all our past analyses as little more 

 than tentative, and reckon upon their being gradually 

 superseded by others of greater trustworthiness, because 

 performed by the aid of lights which past analysts did 

 not possess. But these numerous New York analyses do 

 not possess that character ; and a careful criticism of 

 methods and results shows that, where they differ from 

 our best European analyses, they are not to be preferred, 

 as their evidence does not strengthen them where they 

 agree. In fact, the vast number of analyses which these 

 volumes contain, compared with the short time in which 

 the entire volumes were prepared, alone indicate haste 

 and throw suspicion upon the trustworthy nature of the 

 results. 



I have rarely met with a person who appeared 

 to me to possess a wider range of knowledge of the 

 various branches of natural science, which may usefully 



