editor's preface. v 

 is improving. We are encouraging skillful and ingenious men, 

 who are aiding us in forming our tastes, by their writings and 

 their labors. We require practical treatises, adapted to our 

 own country. Foreign books are not sufficient for us. Good, 

 many of them are : suggestive in many things, and instruc- 

 tive in others. The work here presented has appeared to tho 

 undersigned better suited to the American inquirer than any 

 other which has issued from a foreign press. It is plainly, 

 unambitiously, sensibly written, and by a thoroughly practical 

 man. It will do much to instruct us in the subjects on which 

 it discourses, and with suitable notes appended, may, perhaps, 

 be more useful to the American reader than without them. 

 Such notes have been attempted by the undersigned — whether 

 acceptably, or not, is submitted to the reader. 



LEWIS F. ALLEN. 



Buffalo, August, 1853. 



