Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a

predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not

changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced

quotation marks retained.

Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.

Some numbers in equations include a hyphen to separate the fractional

and integer parts. These are not minus signs, which, like other

arithmetic operators, are surrounded by spaces.

The original book apparently used a smaller font for multiple reasons,

but as those reasons were not always clear to the Transcriber, smaller

text is indented by 2 spaces in the Plain Text version of this eBook,

and is displayed smaller in other versions.

Footnotes, originally at the bottoms of pages, have been collected and

repositioned just before the Index.

Page 59: “95 × 1·623 = 154·185” was misprinted as “95 + 1·623 =

154·185” and has been corrected here.

The Table of Contents does not list the “Phenomena of Heat” chapter,

which begins on page 185; nor the Index, which begins on page 242.

Page 95: “adjustible” was printed that way.

Page 151: Missing closing quotation mark added after “rapidly evaporate

in space.” It may belong elsewhere.

Page 221: Missing closing quotation mark not added for phrase beginning

“it is a fine invention”.

Curiosities of Science, Past and Present A Book for Old and Young · 第 469 / 469 题