BY CHARLES DAVIES, LL. D. AUTHOR OF FIRST LESSONS IN ARITHMETIC, ELEMENTARY ALGEBRA, LYTICAL GEOMETRY, DIFFERENTIAL AND INTEGRAL CALCULUS. LIBA A. S. BARNES & COMPANY, NEW YORK AND CHICAGO. Entored according to Act of Congress, in the year Eighteen Hundred and Fifty-on) BY CHARLES DAVIES, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. MEA AORK PREFACE. THOSE who are conversant with the preparation of elementary text-books, have experienced the difficulty of adapting them to the various wants which they are intended to supply. The institutions of education are of all grades, from the college to the district school, and although there is a wide difference between the extremes, the level, in passing from one grade to the other, is scarcely broken. Each of these classes of seminaries requires text-books adapted to its own peculiar wants; and if each held its proper place in its own class, the task of supplying suitable works would not be difficult. An indifferent college is generally inferior in the system and scope of its instruction, to the academy or high school; while the district school is often found to be superior to its neighboring academy. The Geometry of Legendre, embracing a complete course of Geometrical science, is all that is desired in the colleges and higher seminaries; while the Practical Mathematics for Practical Men, recently published, is designed to meet the wants of those schools which are strictly elementary and practical in their systems of instruction. |