THE INTELLECTUAL OBSERVER. 



FEBRUARY, 1865. 



NOTICE TO OUR READERS. 



It is now three years since the issue of the first number of the 

 Intellectual Observes, and we may congratulate our readers 

 and ourselves on the success of an experiment that would not 

 have been attempted in any other country, and that would not 

 have been justified by the state of education in England ten 

 years ago. There is no characteristic of the present condition 

 of our society more satisfactory than the rapid, but at the same 

 time steady, growth of a taste for physical and descriptive 

 science. Especially in the direction of natural history (in- 

 cluding geology) has this development been manifested ; and 

 next in order of popularity, observational astronomy has secured 

 its votaries in hundreds of English homes. For one micro- 

 scope or telescope that was pointed by the last generation at 

 the minute wonders of earth, or the gigantic marvels of heaven, 

 hundreds are now in daily or nightly work. 



During the last three years we have ministered to these 

 pursuits, and we have reason to know that our exertions have 

 been the means of largely extending the number of their 

 followers, and thus creating a still further demand for such 

 information and help as our columns can afford. We have 

 endeavoured to provide for those wants which have been most 

 strongly felt by the growing class of Intellectual Observers 

 but while devoting a large portion of our space to natural 

 history, microscopy, and observational astronomy, we have not 

 omitted to present a many-sided view of the progress of science 

 in all the variety of its departments ; so that the six volumes 

 we have issued will be found to contain an exposition of the 

 most striking facts and the most important principles that 

 have been discovered or elucidated since our labours began. 

 Amongst the special subjects of this period which have been 

 discussed in our pages, we may mention the new and impor- 

 tant applications of the spectroscope, an instrument of physical 

 analysis, which has not only added to our list of terrestrial sub- 

 stances, as in the discovery of thallium and rubidium, but in 



VOL. VII. — NO. I. B 



