NOTE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION.
The great prominence which the modern doctrine of the Conservation of Energy or Correlation of Forces has lately assumed in the world of thought, has made a simple and popular explanation of the subject very desirable. The present work of Dr. Balfour Stewart, contributed to the International Scientific Series, fully meets this requirement, as it is probably the clearest and most elementary statement of the question that has yet been attempted. Simple in language, copious and familiar in illustration, and remarkably lucid in the presentation of facts and principles, his little treatise forms just the introduction to the great problem of the interaction of natural forces that is required by general readers. But Professor Stewart having confined himself mainly to the physical aspects of the subject, it was desirable that his views should be supplemented by a statement of the operation of the principle in the spheres of life and mind. An Appendix has, accordingly, been added to the American edition of Dr. Stew-
