"This book contains a brief and very clear summary of information for young readers upon the natural products used in the arts, and the arts by which they are converted to Man's use. It tells the main facts that relate to every manufacture, and describes the various kinds of apparatus and machinery--chains, cranks, valves, wheels, steam and other engines, fire-arms, stills, thermometers and barometers, ploughs, thrashing-machines, &c., as well as the more notable kinds of engineering work. To make the brief descriptions as effectual as full ones, they are very freely illustrated with good woodcuts by the Brothers Dalziel. Whatever is described is shown not only by plans and diagrams, but frequently also by little pictures that are very interesting and effective. The illustrations, we should add, are not copies of copies, but new and direct sketches from the things they represent. Among efforts to produce cheap volumes of useful information for the young, we account this one of the most successful." _Art Journal, August._ "This is just the book to place in the hands of an intelligent boy or girl--for why should the useful information it contains be limited to sex?--who desires to know something about those things from which so much of his comfort and enjoyment is derived. Every youth in Prussia, whatever be his condition--the prince and the peasant alike--is, we believe, compelled by the laws which apply in that country to education, to learn some trade or handicraft. Mr. Noyce's book will serve to initiate every boy in the United Kingdom who reads it, into the theoretical art and mystery of the material and manufacturing world. He divides his teachings into six sections, under the respective heads of Natural Products, Manufactured Products, Products of Skilled Labour, Arts and Trade Processes, Apparatus and Machinery, and Engineering Works, bringing into notice more than one hundred and fifty different subjects. The explanations and descriptions are, as they should be, simple and untechnical, as far as possible; concise, yet sufficiently demonstrative; a _multum in parvo_, to which Messrs. Dalziel's clear and well-executed engravings give great additional value. Such a volume is worth a hundred story-books as a present to the juveniles." _Illustrated London News, July 3._