Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume I.djvu/10

vi by the indefatigable explorers of Africa, and a new impulse has been given to human activity on that continent by the discovery of gold and diamonds.

The great political revolutions of the last decade, with the natural result of the lapse of time, have brought into public view a multitude of new men, whose names are in every one's mouth, and of whose lives every one is curious to know the particulars. Great battles have been fought and important sieges maintained, of which the details are as yet preserved only in the newspapers or in the transient publications of the day, but which ought now to take their place in permanent and authentic history. Since the completion of our first edition, the decennial censuses of the United States and of Great Britain have been taken, as well as many other censuses throughout the world, and the statistics of population, commerce, manufactures, and other branches of industry, that were correct at that time, have been superseded by new material.

In preparing the present edition for the press, it has accordingly been the aim of the editors to bring down the information to the latest possible dates, and to furnish an accurate account of the most recent discoveries in science, of every fresh production in literature, and of the newest inventions in the practical arts, as well as to give a succinct and original record of the progress of political and historical events.

The work has been begun after long and careful preliminary labor, and with the most ample resources for carrying it on to a successful termination. Several of the most experienced and competent of the writers of the original work have been employed as revisers, and the assistance of new contributors of eminent distinction in their respective departments has been secured, in addition to that of members of the former corps. Only such portions of the original matter have been retained as were found to be in accordance with the existing state of knowledge; every statement has been compared with the latest authorities; every error that could be discovered by the most careful scrutiny has been corrected; many emendations in arrangement and style have been introduced; all apparent superfluities in subject and treatment have been retrenched; a multiplicity of new titles, most of which have sprung up since the issue of the first edition, have been added; while those which have become obsolete, or which were found to have lost most of their former importance, have been made to give place to others of fresher interest and unquestionable value. None of the original stereotype plates have been used, but every page has been printed on new type, forming in fact a new Cyclopædia, with the same plan and compass as its predecessor, but with a far greater pecuniary expenditure, and with such improvements in its composition as have been suggested by longer experience and enlarged knowledge.

The illustrations which are introduced for the first time in the present edition have been added not for the sake of pictorial effect, but to give greater lucidity and force to the explanations in the text. They embrace all branches of science and of natural history, and depict the most famous and remarkable features of scenery, architecture, and art, as well as the various processes of mechanics and manufactures. Although intended for instruction rather than