4 
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 
every effort to maintain the character and advance the inter- 
ests of every class committed to his charge. 
The length to which these personal remarks have been ex- 
tended, by an anxious desire to expose the unaffected diffi- 
dence with which the assumption of this chair is attended, 
has, in some measure,directed your attention from an exposition 
of the plan of the course intended to be pursued. Without 
any assumption of originality in method or arrangement, it 
may fairly be allowed to every teacher of Chemistry to arrange 
his subjects in a manner peculiar to himself, according to his 
best judgment; and this, too, without any imputation against 
the propriety of the arrangement of others. There are, per- 
haps, no two minds in which the great system is seen in pre- 
cisely the same point of view; and hence follows the differ- 
ence in the mode in which its outline would be presented by 
each to others. Equally differing are the values which vari- 
ous teachers would place upon the same portions of the science; 
and hence it is that equal prominence is not given by all to 
the same subjects. Of the propriety and estimate which is to 
be placed upon each arrangement, and the confidence to which 
the selection of prominent topics is entitled, the results 
must determine. The time allotted for developing the truths 
of chemical science is by far too brief to enable the lecturer, 
concise and perspicuous as he may be, to introduce to the no- 
tice and attentive regard of his class all that is embraced 
within these terms. He is, therefore, compelled to make 
such a selection of topics as the period assigned will embrace, 
and to which a proper degree of attention may be paid. Al- 
though in certain respects all must agree, in regard to what 
may be deemed fundamental principles, which must, by all 
means, be included in any arrangement, yet, in descriptive 
Chemistry, some latitude is allowed for the exercise of indi- 
vidual judgment; and, hence it is, that teachers will differ 
in regard to the selection of topics toward which the mind of 
the student is to be directed, and upon which the attention is 
invited to dwell. Various motives must exist, in directing 
the judgment of the professor to the one hand or the other, 
as he enters upon the vast field from which his harvest is to 
