In few American colleges
is the study of the Calculus required of all students. In preparing a
scientific text-book of this sort, originality is neither aimed at nor
required. A judicious selection of materials, correct translation from
the excellent French and German hand-books, with such changes in the
notation as will better adapt it for American use, and a clear, logical
arrangement are the chief merits of such a treatise; and these are
merits which seldom gain much praise, though their absence would expose
the author to censure. The definitions of Professor Peck's book are
exact and concise, every proposition is rigidly demonstrated, and the
illustrations and descriptions are brief, pointed, and intelligible.
Professor Peck says in the Preface, that the book was prepared "to
supply a want felt by the author when engaged in teaching Natural
Philosophy to college classes"; but surely a teacher who prepares a
text-book for his own classes must need a double share of patience and
zeal. Every error which the book contains will be exposed, and the
author will have ample opportunity to repent of all the inaccuracies
which may have crept into his work. Again, the instructor who uses his
own text-book encounters, besides the inevitable monotony of teaching
the same subject year after year, the additional weariness of finding
in the pages of his text-book no mind but his own, which he has read so
often and with so little satisfaction.
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