a combination essential to its success, have divided them- 

 selves into eight scientific classes, namely : Astronomy. 

 Geography, and Natural Philosophy ; Natural History; 

 Geology and Mineralogy ; Chemistry ; the application 

 of Science to the useful Arts ; Agriculture ; American 

 History and Antiquities ; and Literature and the Fine 

 Arts. It is of these branches of science, and of some 

 of their most important divisions, that it is my intention 

 to treat, and to endeavor to explain their effect upon the 

 physical, moral, and social condition of mankind. 



During a long period the sciences were independent 

 of each other in their progress. It was essential that 

 facts should be discovered, carefully studied, well con- 

 sidered, analyzed, and classed, in order to obtain a 

 knowledge of their causes and first principles, and, by 

 that means, advance each science to a certain degree 

 before their points of contact, the mutual assistance they 

 afford, and the influence they exercise upon each other, 

 could be fully understood. It is especially since the 

 end of the last century that the progress of the human 

 mind, in the study of the sciences, has so wonderfully 

 developed their reciprocal relations advantages due 

 altogether to the alliance of the synthetic and analytic 

 methods followed by Gallileo and his disciples, and 

 systematized by Bacon. Thus it is that chemistry and 

 natural philosophy have made such rapid progress. 

 They cannot move forward one without the other: and 

 they shed their light on physiology, on the arts and 

 manufactures, and on every branch of natural history. 



Not only do the sciences mutually aid each other, 

 but the arts and sciences do so likewise. Some of the 

 arts depend for their execution upon an intimate ac- 



