Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: plates, very clofely engraved, and the execution of th- engravings has been minutely fuperintended. But the text of the Ice. tures has been made fo independent of the figures, that ihe reader is tiei-er interrupted in the middle of a chain of reafoning, but is referred, at the end of" a paragraph, to a platej which has always a fafficient explanation on the oppofite page. " The bulk of this work is not fo great as to require, for its entire perufal, any unrcafcnablc portion of time or of labour. There may, however, be fome perfons who would be fatiified with attending to thofe parts in which it differs mod from former publications, without having leifure or inclination to ftudy the whole. To fuch it may be defirablc to have;hofe fubjcfts pointed out which appear to the author to be the moil defcrving of their notice. " The fundamental doclrines of motion have; in the firfl place, been more immediately referred to axioms (imply mathematical, than has hitherto been ufual; and the application of thefe doctrines to practical purpofes has perhaps in forr.c inftancc been facilitated. The paflive ftrength of materials of all kind has been very fully invcftigated, and many new conclufioris have been formed refpefting it, which are of immediate importance t the architeft and to the engineer, and which appear to contradict the refult of fome very elaborate calculations. " The theory of waves has been much fimplificd, and fome. what extended, and their motions have been illuftrated by experiments of a peculiar nature. A finiilar method of reafoning has fc.tn applied to the circulation of the blood, to the propagation of found, either in fluids or in folids, and to the vibrations of niufical chords; the general principle of a velocity, correfponding to half the height of a certain m...