PREFACE.
THIS work- a small book on a great subject-treats, in alphabetical arrangement, of those numerous matters which come generally within
the range of manufactures and the productive arts . The rawmaterialsanimal, vegetable, and mineral-whence the manufactured products are derived are succinctly noticed in connection with the processes
which they undergo, but not as subjects of natural history.
operations of the Mine and the Mill, the Foundry and the Forge, the Factory and the Workshop, are passed under review. The principal machines and engines , tools and apparatus , concerned in manufacturing processes , are briefly described. The scale on which our chief branches of national industry are conducted, in regard to values and quantities, is indicated in various ways. The volume must be taken simply as a compendium of the various subjects to which it relates a succinct account of the leading facts. If it serves as an introduction to, or a brief and handy substitute for, more bulky and costly works , it will have fulfilled its purpose.
Confined pretty closely to the matters denoted by its title, the Dictionary
touches only in a cursory way on scientific topics . The physical and chemical laws which supply a basis for the industrial arts must nécessarily be noticed so far as to render the processes intelligible ; but scientific investigations per se, irrespectively of their practical application, are not included .
Nor has it been deemed expedient to include the vast subject of Civil Engineering. The earth-work, concrete-work, brick-work, stone-work, wood-work, and iron- work , whereby the bold conceptions of the engineer are realised , are mechanically and technically similar to those concerned in ordinary building operations ; but the scientific elaboration of plan, the largeness of scale, and the grandeur of result, place the great works of civil engineering in a class by themselves . Railways, cuttings, tunnels, embankments, viaducts , bridges , aqueducts , canals, locks, docks , quays,
harbours, sea walls , breakwaters , lighthouses , drainage, sewers , water supply, river improvements, land reclamations, may well have a companion
volume to the present devoted to them.
The author has supplemented his own acquaintance with the subjects treated in this volume by information derived from trustworthy sources .
Among such sources may be named Tomlinson's comprehensive and accurate " Cyclopædia of Useful Arts ; " Hunt's recent edition of " Ure's Dictionary of Arts and Manufactures ; " Reports of the several International Industrial Exhibitions , held at Hyde Park in 1851 , New York in 1853 , Paris in 1855, Brompton in 1862 , and Paris in 1867 ; Proceedings of the British Association, and of the Social Science Congress; Industrial and Statistical Papers of various kinds included among the Parliamentary Blue-books ; and the Reports of Proceedings before the Society of Arts and the Scientific bodies . A few facts have been derived from Cola's recent volume ( " How to Develop Productive Industry in India and the East," Virtue & Co. , 1867) .
As a native of India, directly connected with the cotton manufacture at Bombay, Mr. Cola has traced the manner in which English-made machinery may best be employed in India ; and to facilitate his work, he has given the present prices of a considerable range of machines. This being a kind of information not often met with in books , a few of his items are given in this Dictionary under their proper headings .