INTRODUCTION 



No branch of knowledge has made more rapid pro- 

 gress, during the last hundred years, than chemistry. 

 From being merely a confused collection of marvel- 

 lous facts and incomprehensible phenomena, it has 

 become a definite and methodical science : no longer 

 mysterious and full of uncertainty, but based on 

 clear and simple laws, the knowledge of chemistry at 

 once gives us the key to a great number of natural 

 changes and phenomena, which without it, would be 

 quite unintelligible. 



Chemistry is intimately connected with all other 

 sciences; for it embraces the study of the various 

 forms and conditions of matter, their nature and pro- 

 perties, and the changes which, either from natural 

 or artificial causes, they undergo. The study of 

 chemistry is of the greatest importance in relation to 

 the arts of life, which all depend more or less on 

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