66 nature and scale of it, is one which Bacon would have welcomed as he welcomed the first tidings from Galileo's telescope; he would have accepted it as an enterprise dignum humano genere." A similar system of concerted observations is now in contemplation with regard to oceanic currents. As a specimen of the same thing in a more general character, take the "Admiralty Manual of Scientific Inquiry," to which I have already referred; a book of practical directions drawn up by some of the most eminent scientific men of our day with special reference to the progress of science in several of its most important departments; directions addressed not to men who are themselves engaged in the theoretical investigation of the subjects, or guided by any "marshalling idea," but to "officers of the navy and travellers in general," telling them what things to observe, in order that their observations may be available for the purposes of scientific inquiry. These are exactly what Bacon would have called " Topica Inquisitionis," instructions for the examination of Nature "super articulos;" and the whole scheme is in perfect accordance, so far as it goes, with Bacon's notion of the way in which men might be set on work for the completing of a natural and experimental history. Why should it not go further? Who can believe that the subjects contained in this little volume are the only subjects to which this method of collecting observations can be applied? who venture to fix the limit beyond which, under such a system sagaciously devised, wisely administered, energetically carried out, and extended to all the departments of nature which admit of it, human discovery may not go?-J. S. DESCRIPTIO HISTORIE NATURALIS ET EXPERIMENTALIS, QUALIS SUFFICIAT ET SIT IN ORDINE AD BASIN ET FUNDAMENTA PHILOSOPHIE VERE. QUOD Instaurationem nostram per partes edamus, id eo spectat ut aliquid extra periculum ponatur. Non absimilis nos movet ratio ut aliam quandam operis particulam jam in præsenti subjungamus, et cum iis quæ supra absolvimus una edamus. Ea est descriptio et delineatio Historiæ Naturalis et experimentalis, ejus generis quæ sit in ordine ad condendam philosophiam, et complectatur materiem probam, copiosam, et apte digestam ad opus interpretis quod succedit. Huic autem rei locus proprius foret quum ad Parascevas Inquisitionis ordine deventum fuerit. Hoc vero prævertere, nec locum proprium expectare, consultius nobis videtur; quod hujusmodi historia, qualem animo metimur et mox describemus, res perquam magnæ sit molis, nec sine magnis laboribus et sumptibus confici possit; ut quæ multorum opera indigeat, et (ut alibi diximus) opus sit quasi regium. Itaque occurrit illud, non abs re fore experiri si forte hæc aliquibus aliis curæ esse possint, ita ut dum nos destinata ordine perficiamus hæc pars quæ tam multiplex |