PROFESSOR OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY AND ASTRONOMY IN YALE COLLEGE.

Eighth Edition, with numerous improvements.

NEW HAVEN:

PUBLISHED BY S. BABCOCK

SOLD BY CROCKER AND BREWSTER, AND GOULD, KENDALL AND LINCOLN,
BOSTON.-F. J. HUNTINGTON, AND CO., ROBINSON, PRATT, AND CO., AND
COLLINS, KEESE AND CO., NEW YORK, GRIGG AND ELLIOT, AND
THOMAS, COWPERTHWAITE AND CO., PHILADELPHIA.-S. BAB-

COCK AND CO., CHARLESTON.-J. S. KELLOGG AND CO.,
MOBILE.-WM. M'KEAN, NEW ORLEANS.-TRUMAN
AND SMITH, CINCINNATI.

HARVARE COS I LOKARY
GIFT OF THE

NEWTON FREE LIBRARY

JUL 18 1935

ENTERED, ACCORDING TO THE ACT OF CONGRESS, IN THE YEAR 1837, by DENISON OLMSTED,

IN THE CLERK'S OFFICE OF THE DISTRICT COURT OF CONNECTICUT.

STEREOTYPED BY

SMITH AND VALENTINE

PREFACE.

THIS “Compendium" is designed to hold an intermediate place, between those works on Natural Philosophy, which are adapted to the use of students in our colleges and universities, and those which treat only of the simplest rudiments of the science, and are adapted to the pupils of the primary schools. To the higher grammar schools, and the more respectable female seminaries, this treatise is believed to be better suited than most works of the same class; containing, as it does, a full exhibition of the principles of Natural Philosophy, with very copious applica tions of them to the arts, and to the phenomena of nature, while it requires in the learner no farther mathematical preparation than a knowledge of Arithmetic. There are in our High schools and Academies, numbers of youth, of both sexes, who are competent to learn much more of our science than the simplest rudiments. By substituting for long demonstrations, such familiar illustrations of the doctrines of philosophy, as may serve to render them fully intelligible to the well informed reader, (although he may be unacquainted with the higher branches of mathematics,) we have been enabled to comprise, in this small volume, a full view of the most useful truths of Natural Philosophy, and their most important practical applications. We have studied to avoid the error attending many of the attempts to render our science easy of comprehension, that of exhibiting nothing but what is so barren and superficial, as to be of little service to the learner.

Beside the students of Academies and High schools, we have had constantly in view two other classes of readers ;-first, educated men, who desire to recur to the study of Natural Philosophy, rather to refresh their memories upon what they once learned in the regular course of their education than to toil again through the demonstrations of philo sophical truths; and, secondly, practical men, who consult works of this class for principles which they can employ in the actual business of life.