14 1VIUODUCTION. 



that which meets us every hour, and is quite unheeded 

 because it so meets us, is as wonderful, considered as a 

 portion of the economy of nature, as that of which we fetch 

 knowledge from afar by the telescope, or reveal out of 

 apparent nothing by the microscope. If we except that 

 mental capacity in ourselves, by which we know, and 

 can reason, and conclude, there is nothing to which the 

 longest and most laborious life of study and observation 

 can conduct us, that has any more wonder about it, 

 than the tendency which water has to flow down a 

 steep, or which the atmosphere has to lift that water 

 again from the sea, and scatter it over the land in 

 fertilizing showers, without the aid of any, even the 

 most trifling, apparatus. And if we think only of 

 practical usefulness, the study of a boiling kettle has 

 brought more of it than any other subject about which 

 the thoughts of men have, in modern times, been 

 engaged, for thence came the steam engine. 



We are aware that these are observations that may 

 occur to any body, that they may, on that account, be 

 stigmatized as common place, and an infliction upon 

 the reader, of that which every body knows. That any 

 body might know all that has been said, we readily 

 allow : our object is not to reveal wonders, or bring- 

 forward novelty; these things we leave to the more 

 ambitious and pretending, and confine ourselves to the 

 more humble task of endeavouring to show, that there 

 is both pleasure and usefulness in that which any 

 body may know, without the smallest pretensions to 

 superior endowment, and without almost any inter- 

 ruption of the busiest profession ; and if we can but 



