preparation has been entrusted to Mr. M. Donovan, Professor of
Chemistry to the Company of Apothecaries in Ireland; so that
it comes to us with some share of recommendatory experience
on the part of the editor. It would, however, be difficult to
point out the advantages of Mr. Donovan's volume over others
of the same description. Neither will such distinction be
looked for but in a scientific journal. The arrangement is
clear and satisfactory; the manner plain and illustrative; and
the matter in accordance with the science of the present day;
though in a few cases the nomenclature is somewhat overloaded
with hard names, and presumes more previous acquaintance with
the subject than is consistent. We subjoin a few extracts of
popular interest.]

_Caloric, or the matter of Heat._

Heat is admitted by the philosophers of the present day to be the
principle concerned in repulsion; and heat and cold are known to
produce expansion and contraction in all bodies. Heat is, therefore,
the antagonist of cohesion. Chemists have thought it necessary to make
a distinction between the senses in which the word heat may be taken.
In its usual acceptation, it merely means the effect excited on the
organs of sensation by a hot body. But as this must be produced by
a power in the hot body independent of sensation, that power is what
chemists understand by the word _heat_: and to distinguish between
the effect and its cause, the term _caloric_ has been substituted.
The introduction of this term appears altogether unnecessary, when
the sense in which the word _heat_ should be understood is explained.
Caloric means the _cause_ of the _sensation_ heat: and there seems no
reason to fear that the perception of heat by the organs of sensation
can ever be misunderstood to be the agent in chemical phenomena.

_Omniscience displayed in the constitution of the Atmosphere._

In the constitution of the atmosphere we have ample scope to admire
the design and execution of a structure calculated, with such wondrous
precision, to fulfil its purposes. Were the atmosphere to consist
wholly of oxygen; and the different kinds of objects which compose,
and are found upon, the globe, to remain what they are; the world
would run through its stages of decay, renovation, and final
destruction, in a rapid cycle. Combustion, once excited, would proceed
with ungovernable violence; the globe, during its short existe