Excerpt from Instructive Extracts: Comprising Religious and Moral Instruction; Natural History; Elementary Science; Accounts of Remarkable Persons, Places, Manners, Arts, and Incidents; With a Selection of Passages From the British Poets, and Various Articles Never Before Published In particular, were all. Of them repeatedly read' over in'. Manuscript, to the highest class of the Sessional School, who, at the some time, underwent a most minute and strict examination upon the subjects contained in them and every article, which was found at all obscure, was immediately rejected, or else modified for the purpose of rendering it more generally intelligible and useful. It was principally with a view to this object that the compiler found it advisable to draw up these articles himself, rather than implicitly to adopt (as he origi nally intended) extracts from other publications. All those articles, accordingly, which have no author's name annexed to them, or are not marked as anonymous, are of this description. To originality, indeed, few of them have the very slightest claim. Those who are acquainted with that excellent work, Conversations on Natural Philosophy, will at once perceive how much the articles on that subject, in the present volume, are indebted to the valuable labours of M re mamet-with regard to those articles, which express 1 y bear to have been taken from other works, it is na cessary, in justice to the authors, to explain, that, in order to adapt them to the present purpose, it has been found necessary, on many occasions, to take the greatest liberties, and to make very considerable alterations. Some are mere abridgments; in others, besides abridg ment, the order of the passages has been altered; and sometimes notes have been thrown into the text. - ln the selection of articles for the present purpose, no use has, on any occasion, been made of former compilations. Several of the poetical extracts, indeed, the compiler was, from the first, aware, had appeared in former col lections, as they probably will do in all subsequent ones. Of the prose extracts, he, at the time, knew only of one, (that on the Division of Labour, which stood in this situation. But on examining the proof sheets, his friends have pointed out one or two more, to which they think the same observation applies. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.