INTRODUCTION. 
As correct ideas respecting natural history are not very 
-_ generally formed, it appears necessary to begin by defining 
“its peculiar object, and establishing rigorous limits between it 
‘and neighbouring sciences. — 
Tn our language and in most others, the word NATURE is 
variously employed. _ At one time it is used to express the 
qualities a being derives from birth,.in opposition to those it 
may owe to art; at another, the entire mass of beings whicli 
eompose the universe ; and at a third, the laws which govern 
those beings. . It is in this latter sense particularly that we 
usually personify nature, and, through respect, use its name 
for that of 3 its Creator. 
Physics, or Natural Philosophy, treats of the nature of these 
three relations, and is either general or particular. General 
physics examines abstractedly each of the properties of those 
movable and extended beings we call bodies. ‘That braneh 
of them styled Dynamics, considers bodies in mass; and pro- 
ceeding from a very small number of experiments, determines 
mathematically the laws of equilibrium, and those of motion 
- and of its communication. Its different divisions are termed 
~ Statics, Hydrostatics, Hydrodynamics, Mechanics, &c. &ce., 
according to the nature of the particular bodies whose motions 
it examines. Optics considers the particular motions of light, 
whose phenomena, which hitherto nothing but experiment has 
been able to determine, aré becoming more numerous. 
Chemistry, another.branch of general physics, exposes the 
laws Ay which the saad molecules of bodies act,on each 
6. ben Wor? FE HA 
