PREFACE. 
iii 
the British sojourners and their descendants are comparatively few, the means 
of education as regards science is but in its infancy; and therefore the import- 
ance of periodicals, purely on the mere abstract branches of science, is not felt. 
It is principally on this account that we determined to blend with purely 
scientific matter, articles on the mechainical arts, and such other interesting 
subjects as regard improvement in manufactures^ commerce, agriculture, &c„ 
in order to suit the taste and promote the benefit of all classes, by which we 
should be able to admit subjects which embrace abstruse investigation into the 
causes of physical changes, and determine the nature of bodies, reducing them 
to their elements, ascertaining their mutual actions and relation, and to apply 
the knowledge, thus ascertained by demonstrative science, to the improvement 
of arts which supply the wants as well as the comforts of life. 
The grave philosopher and the man of science may not delight in articles of 
the former description ; but, by attending to our explanations, he would find 
that our object is to secure extensive circulation,tending greatly to support that 
portion of our work which is to be devoted to the latter articles which he de- 
sires to see. Our great object was to be the means of leading to important local 
and national improvements of promoting traffic by rivers, roads, and canals* 
by steam communication and rail-road transit ; in which to excite individual 
enterprize for large interest on capital, and to shew that such improvements 
call imperatively for the immediate attention of Government for liberal appro- 
priations. That stupendous machine, the steam engine, has already undergone* 
in its progress more than two hundred different modifications. It was our 
desire to give every new improvement in their motive forces from water, ether, 
alcohol, essential oils, the liquifiable gases, atmospheric air, &c. The prepara- 
tion of that invaluable and important metal, the chief material of nearly all 
machinery — iron, as well as the various manipulations and mechanism em- 
ployed in the great staple commodities, cotton, silk, woollen, and linen ; the 
construction of engines, mills, railways, carriages, ships, boats, docks, canals, 
bridges, furnaces, boilers, gas machinery, looms, presses, pumps, paddles, 
ploughs, water works, illustrated by lithographic sketches, together with an 
account of the various important processes of dyeing, distilling, bleaching, 
brewing, and tanning. While to the chemist and mechanic we hope to be 
of essential service, we shall do our utmost to meet the wishes of the natura- 
list. The extravagant price of standard works in this department has been to 
discourage the naturalist in his interesting study. We have been able to glean 
from the numerous works which have been published, and from papers in the 
transactions of learned societies during the past year, all that is novel and 
valuable for this class of our readers. 
The question remaining to be considered next is, what benefit will such in- 
telligence afford to a country like this, containing 1,116,000 square miles, equal 
in size to Great Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, Hungary, 
Poland, and Turkey, put together ; the number of people who inhabit it being 
computed at 100,000,000 souls. When the riches of other countries have 
