Excerpt from An Introductory Treatise on the Nature and Properties of Light, and on Optical Instruments To aid the progress of this study, the following work has been written; and the author, hoping to assist those who, like himself, are climbing the hill of science, has prepared, as a companion to this, a series of introductory papers on the pure sciences and Astronomy, which Treatises will shortly be published. To urge the necessity of Mathametical learning is unnecessary; for as the moon increases or wanes according to her position with the glorious luminary, so science waxes or decays as she is united to, or forced from the Mathematics. When these are combined, the hand of science is, indeed, mighty, and truly the Philosopher is greatly honoured. He combats nature with her own weapons, and to the honour and glory of England let it be remembered, that after nearly six thou sand years, in which mankind had been struggling to obtain the superiority over nature; in which Archimedes, and the most illustrious ancients had joined, inventing screws, wheels, and springs; an Englishman vanquished her with a vapour. 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.