PEELIMINAET ADDRESS. 3 



general reader. Perhaps it may be permissible to note as one of tbe 

 most essential characteristics of European scientific journals that they 

 recognise no such class of readers. No communication can be too 

 minute, technical, or abstruse for them, so long as it involves any 

 element of scientific truth • and we trust to have the concurrence of all 

 our readers in our purpose to open the pages of this Journal to strictly 

 scientific communications, however unattractive the form may be in 

 which they are presented. 



In such departments as Geology and Mineralogy, Philology, 

 Ethnology, Chemistry, or Mathematics, if this Journal does not prove 

 an altogether premature and untimely birth, occasional communications 

 must be looked for in a form appreciable only by a very limited class 

 of its readers. Such communications, however, we have rather to fear 

 than to hope, will be few ; and the greatest amount of success which 

 can now be anticipated, is to sow a few of the first seeds for a future 

 harvest of science. In so doing it may be permitted to one Provin- 

 cial journal to cater for something higher than popular gratification. 

 Nevertheless it will be seen that our aim is essentially practical, and 

 while we seek rather to make the Journal useful than popular, the 

 latter element will not be overlooked. Nor need it be so. Science 

 has also its popular aspects, and literary criticism may legitimately 

 embrace much which has charms for a variety of tastes. Enquiries 

 into the varied resources and the mineral wealth of the country, and 

 reports of the progress of the great engineering works of the Province 

 must possess attractions for a still greater number. The disclosures 

 of Greology include points appreciable by all as of the highest prac- 

 tical importance. Chemistry eliminates from recondite processes 

 simplifications in the productions of the commonest manufactures, 

 and discovers products of great commercial value. And while those 

 enquiries yield such returns, the students of Natural Philosophy, 

 Agricultural Science, and Natural History, have in each of their de- 

 partments fields of investigation which cannot fail, when zealously 

 explored, to contribute results of widely varied interest. 



By and by, we doubt not, Canada will be able to maintain a litera- 

 ture which shall embrace independent representatives in each depart- 

 ment of knowledge. But the time for such a division of labour lies 

 still in the future ; and meanwhile the conductors of the " Canadian 

 Journal " must ask equally for the charitable judgment of the 

 scientific and of the popular reader. Specially would they crave the 

 generous forbearance of the men of science of Europe, among whom 

 it is hoped that those communications may be received in exchange 

 for the scientific records of their long matured labours, and of the 



