OF

Nature, Science, and Art.

FOR THE YOUNG.

EDITED BY

WILLIAM ANDERSON,

AUTHOR OF LANDSCAPE LYRICS, &C.

PATON AND RITCHIE,

3 SOUTH HANOVER STREET, EDINBURGH,

1953

198. C. 21.

PREFACE.

THE object of the following pages is to furnish popular descriptions of some of the most striking wonders of nature, science, and art,-it would take many books to comprehend them all,-that, as Cowper says,

"Amusement and instruction, hand in hand,”

may go together, and the youthful reader may have a volume easy of perusal, which, while it interests his mind, may also inform and enlighten his understanding. The materials have been selected from a great variety of sources; and the Editor has been very careful in arranging and disposing them in such a manner as to make the work useful as well as agreeable reading. This is the only merit which he can claim in the compilation.

While engaged in stringing together so many of the wonders of nature, science, and art, he could have wished that the limits assigned to him would have admitted of the introduction of a greater number. But

the boundless field of nature's wonders, in which the goodness, wisdom, and power of God are so marvellously displayed; and the mighty and still onward progress of science and art, in which the ingenuity, perseverance, and skill of man are continually producing results of a new and hitherto unknown nature, render it, in a work like this, only possible to chronicle the most remarkable.

In general, authorities are quoted; but where the statements of different writers have been incorporated in any passage, this could not always be conveniently done, nor is it, in a work of this kind, always expected. A small portion of the matter, in the early part of the compilation, has been derived from a little work printed by the Editor in 1835, and carefully corrected for this, by reference to recent sources of information.

W. A.