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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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574 Review . ' S —Shepherd , Joyce and Carpenters ystematic Education .
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is to be lamented that Mr . George Walker had not encouragement to complete his treatise on this subject . On Fluxions , the Author recommends to beginners , Rowe or Vince ; and to proficients , Simpson and Maejaurin . Then follows some account of the principal writers on the Doctrine of Chances , Annuities , Insurance , &c . a history of Navigation , with a critique upon the principal works , of which those of Robertson , Mackay , and Mendoza de Rios , are particularly recommended . A few observations on Mensuration , Surveying , Levelling and Dialling , with references to the treatises of Hutton , Bounycastle , Leslie , Crocker , Davis , Ferguson , &c . conclude the volume .
The second volume commences with Natural Philosophy , beginning as usual with Mechanics , the theory of which is so necessary to the right understanding of so large a portion of the other departments . After an historical sketch , the Author briefly treats of Attraction , the Centre of Gravity > the Mechanical Powers , &c ., referring to Keill , Wood , Parkinson and Hamilton . Next come Hydrostatics , of which also we have the history , from Hiero ' s Crown to the Improved Steam Engine ; then come the Specific Gravity and Density of Bodies in general , and the quaquaversum Pressure of Fluids ; with references to Cotes , Vince and Parkinson ; Pneumatics , or the Statics of Elastic Fluids , with the principles of the
air pump , hydraulics and hydrodynamics , or the conveyance of fluids , and their application as a moving force , with references to Clare , Smeaton , Gregory and Atwood ( Prony , Guglielmini and Venturi ) . On Optics , ( for the history of which he refers to Priestley on Light and Colours , which is characterized as one of that Author ' s most interesting works , ) the writer briefly treats of light , refraction , ( in general , and the production of colour by the different refrangibility of its component parts , ) reflection , the eye , and the several optical instruments ; with references to Stack , Wood , Harris , and especially Smithy and to Baker , Adams , and his own little work on the Microscope .
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On Electricity he again refers to Priestley for the history , and then passes on to the distinction between electrics and non-electrics , the electrical machine , electrical attraction and repulsion , the Leyden phial and the shock , &c , referring to his own Dialogues , to Adams , Cuthbertson ^ and especially Singer , whose early death was a great loss to practical science . His work is excellent also as an introduction to Galvinism , or rather Voltaism , which , in the hands of Sir Humphrey Davy , has achieved such important and interesting discoveries ; for which see hisown work , and the Articles in Rees ^ s Cyclopaedia . This chapter concludes with a short account of Magnetism , with reference to Cavallo and Haiiy . Th « chapter on Astronomy ( which
would more naturally have followed Optics , which ha ^ e so much illusstrated its phenomena , as Electricity would better have introduced Chemistry , the principles of which its voltaic modification has so much unfolded ) , is somewhat more full than the rest , as the sublimity aud importance of the subject required . After , as before , a brief history of the science , from the Chaldeans to Piazzi and Olbets , a general vi-ew is given of the face of the heavens , the division of the stars into constellations , &c , with Herschel ' s Theory of the Construction of the Universe ; of the solar systems , according to the three great schemes of Ptolemy , Tycho Brahe , and Copernicus ; of the several constituent members of it , with
Herscnei s idea of the sun as itself an opaque habitable sphere , surrounded by a luminous external matter ; of the distances and periods of the planets which revolve round him , together with their respective peculiarities , and the secondary planets connected with several of them ; the phases of the moon , the phenomena of eclipses , and of the tides . The books referred to are Bonnycastle , Ferguson , Ol . Gregory and Robison ; the larger works of Newton and David Gregory , and Vince , Lalande and Laplace . The article of Natural Philosophy concludes with some important general observations connected with the whole subject : on the advantage of a course of study of this kind being ac *
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1818, page 574, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2480/page/38/
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