Excerpt from A Manual of Scientific Enquiry: Prepared for the Use of Officers in Her Majesty's Navy, and Travellers in General

It is the opinion of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty that it would be to the honour and advantage of the Navy, and conduce to the general interests of Science, if new facilities and encouragement were given to the collection of information upon scientific subjects by the officers, and more particularly by the medical officers, of Her Majesty's Navy, when upon foreign service, and their Lordships are desirous that for this purpose a Manual be compiled, giving general instructions for observation and for record in various branches of science. Their Lordships do not consider it necessary that this Manual should be one of very deep and abstruse research. Its directions should not require the use of nice apparatus and instruments: they should be generally plain, so that men merely of good intelligence and fair acquirement may be able to act upon them, yet, in pointing out objects, and methods of observation and record, they might still serve as a guide to officers of high attainment, and it will be for their Lordships to consider whether some pecuniary reward or promotion may not be given to those who succeed in producing eminently useful results.

Their Lordships are aware that in the instructions prepared under the directions of the Royal Society for the Antarctic expedition, in the hints for collecting information given to officers on the expedition to China, in the excellent book by A. Jackson, entitled 'What to Observe, ' and in other documents and publications - the fullest directions are to be found, but they are either more voluminous or more closely confined to objects which regard particular localities than is to be desired for a general Manual.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.