390 PREFACE TO THE PARASCEVE. 



in concert upon a scientific plan, and brought to a common 

 centre ? With reference to some particular subjects, such 

 measures have been of late years taken on a scale of Baconian 

 magnitude. The system of observations instituted by the Great 

 British Association with respect to Terrestrial Magnetism, if I 

 am rightly informed as to the nature and scale of it, is one 

 which Bacon would have welcomed as he welcomed the first 

 tidings from Galileo's telescope ; he would have accepted it 

 as an enterprise "dignuin humano genere." A similar 

 system of concerted observations is now in contemplation 

 with regard to oceanic currents. As a specimen of the same 

 thing in a more general character, take the "Admiralty 

 Manual of Scientific Inquiry," to which I have already re- 

 ferred ; a book of practical directions drawn up by some 

 of the most eminent scientific men of our day with special 

 reference to the progress of science in several of its most im- 

 portant departments ; directions addressed not to men who are 

 themselves engaged in the theoretical investigation of the 

 subjects, or guided by any ce marshalling idea," but to " officers 

 of the navy and travellers in general," telling them what 

 things to observe, in order that their observations may be 

 available for the purposes of scientific inquiry. These are 

 exactly what Bacon would have called " Topics Inquisitionis," 

 instructions for the examination of Nature " super articulos ; " 

 and the whole scheme is in perfect accordance, so far as it goes, 

 with Bacon's notion of the way in which men might be set on 

 work for the completing of a natural and experimental history. 

 Why should it not go further? Who can believe that the 

 subjects contained in this little volume are the only subjects to 

 which this method of collecting observations can be applied ? 

 who venture to fix the limit beyond which, under such a 

 system sagaciously devised, wisely administered, energetically 

 carried out, and extended to all the departments of nature 

 which admit of it, human discovery may not go? J. S. 



