correct and impartial account of almost every work that holds any importance either among the discoveries or mere elementary assistances of science. If we add to this, three articles in the Magazine of Popular Science, by the Editor of this volume, we shall have enumerated, we believe, every published contribution to the subject. It may, however, be mentioned, that Mr. Hunter discovered that John Field and John Dee adopted the Copernican system as early as 1556; and Professor De Morgan has shown that Robert Recorde was a convert to the heliocentric theory at nearly the same period. But these discoveries seem to have attracted little attention from scientific men, either on account of that lamentable apathy towards matters of history which is too frequently characteristic of the lover of demonstration, or perhaps, let us hope, from a want of some general channel of communication, such as the Historical Society of Science now affords.

The letters of Sir Charles Cavendish, which are, with two or three exceptions, now published for the first time, will, we think, enable the reader to form a tolerably correct idea of the extent to which the study of analytical science was then carried in England. If we give a glance at the state of this branch of science a short time anterior to that period, we shall be rather at a loss to account for the number and success of its English cultivators, who seem to have arisen on a sudden and at the same time with efforts sufficient to produce works equalling, if not surpassing, those of their continental neighbours.