PREFACE

ΤΟ

VOLUME SIXTEENTH.

THE period over which the present volume extends, has been productive of matters of more than ordinary interest to the scientific world.

One Parliamentary Committee has been engaged in investigating the means of increasing the safety of Steam Vessels; another, in ascertaining the practicability and advantage of applying Steam power to the propelling of Carriages on common roads; two Inquiries which characterize very remarkably the progress which the British. people have made in the practical application of Science to the business of life, and which embrace some of the most important points to which the thoughts of inventive and speculative men are turned at the present time. The space which these Inquiries occupy in the following pages, is with good reason considerable. The Reports of both Committees are given at length; and the Minutes of Evidence on which they were founded, only so far condensed as to be shorn of what is immaterial or irrelevant. Mechanics' Magazine, too, belongs the merit of giving, exclusively, the entire contents of these important, but so far as the public are concerned, nearly inaccessible do

cuments.

To the