Of the causes which have induced me to print this volume I have
little to say; my own opinion is, that it will ultimately do some
service to science, and without that belief I would not have
undertaken so thankless a task. That it is too true not to make
enemies, is an opinion in which I concur with several of my
friends, although I should hope that what I have written will not
give just reason for the permanence of such feelings. On one
point I shall speak decidedly, it is not connected in any degree
with the calculating machine on which I have been engaged; the
causes which have led to it have been long operating, and would
have produced this result whether I had ever speculated on that
subject, and whatever might have been the fate of my
speculations.

If any one shall endeavour to account for the opinions stated in
these pages by ascribing them to any imagined circumstance
peculiar to myself, I think he will be mistaken. That science
has long been neglected and declining in England, is not an
opinion originating with me, but is shared by many, and has been
expressed by higher authority than mine. I shall offer a few
notices on this subject, which, from their scattered position,
are unlikely to have met the reader's attention, and which, when
combined with the facts I have detailed in subsequent pages, will
be admitted to deserve considerable attention. The following
extract from the article Chemistry, in the Encyclopaedia
Metropolitana, is from the pen of a gentleman equally qualified
by his extensive reading, and from his acquaintance with foreign
nations, to form an opinion entitled to respect. Differing from
him widely as to the cause, I may be permitted to cite him as