While the brevity that has been observed on points of secondary interest has enabled the editors to give a greater number of titles than is usual in productions of similar intent, they have rigidly excluded those which would increase the size of the work without enhancing its value. The terms which require only the common dictionary definitions, and the proper names which fill an unimportant place in gazetteers and biographical dictionaries, have been rejected on system.
The materials which have served as a foundation for the work have been derived from a great variety of sources. Besides the standard works on special subjects, scientific, literary, or historical, the numerous encyclopædias, dictionaries of the various branches of study, and popular conversations-lexicons, in which the literature of the last quarter of a century is so singularly rich, have been diligently consulted and compared. Their contributions to the common stock of knowledge have furnished many valuable facts, statements, and suggestions; while recent biographies, histories, books of travel, scientific treatises, statistical reports, and the current journals and periodical literature of the day have been put in constant requisition, and their contents carefully digested and utilized.
A great mass of important information has been derived from consultation with practical men in different branches of manufactures and other industrial processes; public officials have liberally supplied us with data from their archives; the representatives of science have imparted to us the results of their experience; the constructors of great works of internal improvement now in progress have favored us with the explanation of their methods and plans; the journalists throughout the country have promptly responded to our request for facts in their respective localities; while many of the writers employed upon the work have enriched it with the fruit of their personal researches, observations, and discoveries in the branches of learning in which their names have attained an honorable distinction.
The editors of this Cyclopædia are unwilling that the first volume of the new edition should pass from their hands without a distinct expression of their obligations to their staff of revisers, to their corps of regular contributors, and to the numerous men of eminence in science, literature, and official position, whose effective coöperation has lightened their own labors, and laid the foundation for the utility and value of the publication.
The volume now presented to the public may be regarded as an earnest of the literary and typographical execution of the whole work. It will be completed mainly by the same writers whose contributions are contained in the first edition, together with many others of equal ability (whose names will be hereafter announced), and will be made to pass through the press as rapidly as is consistent with mechanical accuracy.
- New York, July 4, 1873.
