PREFACE

Summary

The work here offered to the Public is based upon and may be considered as an extension, and, it is hoped, an improvement of a treatise on the same subject, forming Part 43. of the Cabinet Cyclopaedia, published in the year 1833. Its object and general character are sufficiently stated in the introductory chapter of that volume, here reprinted with little alteration; but an opportunity having been afforded me by the Proprietors, preparatory to its re-appearance in a form of more pretension, I have gladly availed myself of it, not only to correct some errors which, to my regret, subsisted in the former volume, but to remodel it altogether (though in complete accordance with its original design as a work of explanation); to introduce much new matter in the earlier portions of it; to re-write, upon a far more matured and comprehensive plan, the part relating to the lunar and planetary perturbations, and to bring the subjects of sidereal and nebular astronomy to the level of the present state of our knowledge in those departments.

The chief novelty in the volume, as it now stands, will be found in the manner in which the subject of Perturbations is treated. It is not — it cannot be made elementary, in the sense in which that word is understood in these days of light reading.