10-10-44 RAP Stechert 45702 PREFACE. NOTWITHSTA OTWITHSTANDING the many publications which have appeared on Mathematical fubjects, and the great improvements that have been made in every department of the fcience, a general treatise, on a cheap and accurate plan, feems as yet to be a defideratum. Volumes have been wrote, not only upon every branch, but even upon particular parts of every branch. These are more particularly adapted to the learned, and cannot all be purchased but at an extraordinary expence. This inconvenience has no less been felt by those who have undertaken the charge of teaching, than by their pupils. Ir must be very difagreeable to a teacher, before he can lead a clafs through a courfe of Practical Geometry, to make the ftudents purchase a number of volumes on detached parts of the courfe: It is no lefs perplexing to a fcholar to read them in order to retain what has been taught: Not to mention that the books fo purchafed may have a very different mode of expreffing the fame thing, which must fill 'encrease the perplexity. THE author has frequently found, from his own experience, as well as from the report of others, that treatifes of this nature afford but imperfect materials for the exercise of youth. Hence teachers are under the neceffity of inventing what they esteem a proper fet of exercises; and to this circumftance must we chiefly afcribe the abfurd custom adopted by fome, viz, that of teaching in their own way. With a view to obviate this inconvenience; to furnish thofe who incline either to teach or learn practical Geometry, with a fyftem at once full and complete, for every purpofe in ordinary life; and to afford them this advantage at an eafy rate-the following treatise is refpectfully fubmitted to the attention of the Public. And, as the author has had fome years experience of its utility and convenience in the courfe of his practice, he thinks he can, with fome degree of confidence, recommend it as the only trea tife that has yet appeared proper for being taught at academies and fchools, the ingenious Dr Hutton's excepted. But though this work is excellent in its kind, its high price prevents its being generally useful ;-an objection which, it is hoped, the following treatise will entirely remove. THE author is confcious that there can now be but few claims to originality; yet he flatters himfelf that, even in this refpect, he will not be found entirely deficient. THE arrangement is fuch as feems beft calculated for inftruction-beginning with the fimple rudiments, and, by gradual and eafy fteps, proceeding to that which is more complex, in fuch order that what is prior paves the way for what is to follow. The greatest care has been taken to felect the moft important articles, and to introduce every ncceffary information, in fo far as regards Menfuration. To fome of the problems two or more rules are annexed, and an example wrought at large to each, in fuch a manner as to be intelligible to the most ordinary capacity; and, for exercife, copious fets of unwrought unwrought examples, with their anfwers, are inferted; and, in order to render this work ftill more acceptable, a great variety of miscellaneous queftions, with their answers, are propofed, as a general exercife and conclufion to the work. UPON the whole, It is hoped that, by means of the prefent treatise, the business of teaching and learning the practical part of Mathematics will be attended with lefs trouble and expence than formerly. CONTENTS. |