Reading lessons ed by E Hughes Author:Edward Hughes Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: well-known law of refraction, and other observers to determine the refractive powers of different substances. 22. It is a different matter when we wish to fin... more »d out any hitherto unknown properties in substances which we know, or to discover new substances. Then truth- seeking experiments may be said to commence. The substance must be placed under as many different conditions as the experimenter's ingenuity can devise, and the resulting changes ascertained and compared. It was by patient labour in such a mode of cross-examining natural objects that many of the great truths of natural science have been established. Experience, of course, and acquaintance with all that has been previously discovered about the examined substance will often suggest the best line of inquiry in which to proceed, and save much waste of time and fruitless labour. No one should endeavour to seek for a new truth in a science until he has mastered those established by others, or he will run the risk of much useless toil; and, even supposing him successful, may only re-discover something already known and published by persons better informed than himself. It is a well-known fact that much ingenuity which might have been turned to better account has been thus wasted, from ignorance of the actual progress of science and its applications; and many undoubted discoverers, so far as is meant by finding a truth for themselves, have been bitterly disappointed after long labours, and the momentary triumph of success, at finding that their resultsad been long before anticipated by a former labourer in the same field of investigation.—E. Puecell. ENTERPRISE. What though this ancient earth be trod No more by step of demigod, Mounting from glorious deed to deed As thou from clime to clime didst lead ; Yet still, th...« less