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HENRY VETHAKE, LL. D.

VICE-PROVOST AND PROFESSOR OF MATHEMATICS IN THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA;
MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY; AUTHOR OF

"A TREATISE ON POLITICAL ECONOMY," ETC.

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RR2160.9
Aye 341

1871, Oct. 16.
Gift of
Prof. Francis Bowen,
of Cambridge.
07/3.26.18335

Entered, according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1846, by

LEA AND BLANCHARD,

in the clerk's office of the District Court of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

STEREOTYPED BY J. FAGAN.

PRINTED BY T. K. AND P. G. COLLINS.

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THE Encyclopædia Americana, to which the present volume is supplementary, has been nearly fourteen years before the public, and has obtained a high rank, in its estimation, among works of a similar nature. It was founded on the basis of the seventh edition of the famous "Conversations-Lexikon." The eighth edition of the latter appeared between the years 1833 and 1837, and the ninth is now in course of publication. Hence it became desirable that this encyclopædia should be extended, to embrace the improvements thus introduced into the German work. But independently of any information which might be derived from this quarter, how many important events have occurred, or facts been observed, and how many individuals have emerged from comparative obscurity during the lapse of fourteen years, affording abundant materials for such a volume as is now offered to the public, and even imperatively requiring its publication to restore to the Encyclopædia Americana all the advantages which belonged to it originally, as a book for ready consultation on subjects of general or popular interest!

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No pains have been spared by the editor to execute the design of posting up to the present date the matter contained in the previous volumes of this work. The books which he has examined for the purpose have been exceedingly numerous, and his correspondence very extensive; but neither books, nor correspondence, have always furnished the latest or most exact information. Sometimes too, he may have failed to do full justice to a subject, from the mass of documents from which he had to cull; and he has occasionally been obliged to omit a subject altogether, from the entire deficiency of materials.

The printed sources of information to which the editor has most frequently had recourse,- beside the later editions of the German

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