OR, MAGAZINE OF CHEMISTRY, MINERALOGY, MECHANICS, NATURAL HISTORY, AGRICULTURE, AND THE ARTS. BY THOMAS THOMSON, M.D. F.R.S. L. & E. F.L.S. &c. MEMBER OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY, OF THE WERNERIAN SOCIETY, AND OF THE VOL. III. JANUARY TO JUNE, 1814. FOR LIBRARY London: Printed by C. Baldwin, New Bridge-street; FOR ROBERT BALDWIN, PATERNOSTER-ROW. SOLD ALSO BY W. BLACKWOOD, EDINBURGH; AND J. CUMMING, DUBLIN. 1814. PREFACE. THE Editor cannot terminate the Third Volume of the Annals of Philosophy without expressing his acknowledgments for the very general and almost unprecedented encouragement and patronage which the work has experienced. When he began to publish the Annals he was well acquainted with the state of the scientific publications of this metropolis, and of the difficulty of venturing a competition with works that had been before the public for 16 or 17 years. Indeed he was warned by several of his friends, for whose judgment he has the highest respect, that the ground was pre-occupied, and that success was not to be looked for. He hoped however that, by bestowing an unusual degree of labour and attention upon the Annals of Philosophy, and by confining it to original papers, or translations of foreign papers supposed to be unknown to the generality of the British public, he should by degrees establish a journal of so novel a kind as scarcely to be considered as a rival to the other scientific and periodical publications of Great Britain, and claiming attention from the value of the information which it would communicate. The result has shown that this opinion was not without foundation; though the Editor acknowledges with pleasure, and not without a feeling of pride, that the success of the work has been much more rapid, and the attention paid to it by men of science much greater, than he had expected. Of the articles in this volume 115 are original papers which made their first appearance in |