REV. JAMES WOOD

EDITOR OF "NUTTALL'S STANDARD DICTIONARY" AND COMPILER OF THE
"DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS"


_THE SIXTY-FIRST THOUSAND_

1907



PREFACE

"The NUTTALL ENCYCLOPÆDIA" is the fruit of a project to provide, in a
concise and condensed form, and at a cheap rate, an epitome of the kind
of information given in the larger Encyclopædias, such as may prove
sufficient for the ordinary requirements, in that particular, of the
generality of people, and especially of such as have not the means for
purchasing or the leisure for studying the larger.

An Encyclopædia is now recognised to be as indispensable a book of
reference as a dictionary; for while the latter explains and defines the
vehicle of _thought_, the former seeks to define the subject-matter. Now
the rapid increase in the vocabulary of a nation, which makes the
possession of an up-to-date dictionary almost one of the necessaries of
life, is evidently due to the vast increase in the number of _facts_
which the language has to describe or interpret; and if it is difficult
to keep pace with the growth in the language, it is obviously more
difficult to attain even a working knowledge of the array of facts which