PREFACE. 
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Vll 
our writers ; for it is not to be denied that we have fewer good writers 
on scientific subjects than on any other in the whole range of human 
knowledge. That it is more in the manner than in the matter that the 
general repugnance to scientific pursuits is owing, appears in the uncom- 
mon success of those excellent works, Mrs. Marcet’s Conversations on 
Chemistry and Dr. Arnott’s work on Natural Philosophy. No one com- 
plains of not understanding these works ; they are level (to use ahacknied 
phrase) to the meanest capacity : yet they treat of subjects that heretofore 
had a mysterious terror for the general reader. But that the obscurity 
and difficulty of science is almost always nothing else than the obscurity 
and difficulty of the writer, is a truth that is more readily acknowledged 
by the self-taught, who every day find themselves obstructed by diffi- 
culties which oral instruction, or even a different work, may suggest to 
them the solution of. 
Entertaining views such as these, the Editor conceived that a periodi- 
cal work afforded peculiar facilities for treating scientific subjects in a 
less repulsive form than is adopted in more formal works, and in parti- 
cular might afford to the student advantages which are otherwise only 
to be found in oral instruction. In such a work, questions may be pro- 
posed and answered, by which the learner’s doubts may be solved, or 
obscurities illustrated. Even the different views which different people 
are found to take of the same subject, may be highly useful to the 
beginner, as it is indeed often the readiest means of removing difficulties 
which had appeared insuperable. It was in fact thought that a monthly 
journal, such as the Gleanings, might be made instrumental in recom- 
mending scientific enquiries to the general reader, chiefly by supplying 
that elementary information so difficult to be found at the moment, and 
yet, for want of which, subjects of the highest interest are found to be 
unintelligible to the unlearned. 
That the Editor’s success has been at all commensurate with his ex- 
pectations, he does not mean to assert : on the contrary he knows, that it 
has been a very general complaint, that the work was not sufficiently 
elementary to effect the object here indicated. This would probably have 
corrected itself in time, although it must have always depended more on 
the contributors than on the Editor. In the mean time, though he is 
glad to see the promised appearance of a superior Journal, he is disposed 
to think that a work such as he has above marked the character of, 
would prove very generally popular, and would receive perhaps more 
encouragement than the Gleanings ever obtained, or even than the 
new Journal can reasonably look forward to enjoy, at least in India. 
J. D. H. 
