It will be a leading object to illustrate AMERICAN NATURAL HISTORY, and especially our MINERALOGY and GEOLOGY. The APPLICATIONS of these sciences are obviously as numerous as _physical arts_, and _physical wants_; for no one of these arts or wants can be named which is not connected with them. While SCIENCE will be cherished _for its own sake_, and with a due respect for its own _inherent_ dignity; it will also be employed as the _handmaid to the Arts_. Its numerous applications to AGRICULTURE, the earliest and most important of them; to our MANUFACTURES, both mechanical and chemical; and to our DOMESTIC ECONOMY, will be carefully sought out, and faithfully made. It is also within the design of this Journal to receive communications on MUSIC, SCULPTURE, ENGRAVING, PAINTING, and generally on the fine and liberal, as well as useful arts; On Military and Civil Engineering, and the art of Navigation. [Illustration: Very truly Yours, B. Silliman] Notices, Reviews, and Analyses of new scientific works, and of new Inventions, and Specifications of Patents; Biographical and Obituary Notices of scientific men; essays on COMPARATIVE ANATOMY and PHYSIOLOGY, and generally on such other branches of medicine as depend on scientific principles; Meteorological Registers, and Reports of Agricultural Experiments: and we would leave room also for interesting miscellaneous things, not perhaps exactly included under either of the above heads. Communications are respectfully solicited from men of science, and _from men versed in the practical arts_. Learned Societies are invited to make this Journal, occasionally, the vehicle of their communications to the Public. The editor will not hold himself responsible for the sentiments and opinions advanced by his correspondents; but he will consider it as an allowed liberty to make slight _verbal alterations_, where errors may be presumed to have arisen from inadvertency.” In the “Advertisement” which precedes the above statement in the first number, the editor remarks somewhat naïvely that he “does not pledge himself that all the subjects shall be touched upon in every number. This is plainly impossible unless every article should be very short and imperfect....”