Transcriber’s Notes
Inconsistencies in spelling, hyphenation, etc. have been retained, in particular in quoted material. Minie rifles and Minié rifles both occur in the text.
Depending in the hard- and software used to read this text and their settings, not all elements may display as intended.
Page 20, Group portrait Eminent Men of Science: there are 50 people in the portrait, but only 48 are identified in the accompanying list.
Page 217, ... he and his brother, Ziba Gay, ...: also referred to as Zeba Gay in this text.
Page 223, Figure 45: The source document does not show any links to or from the entry A. F. Prentice.
Page 235, F. J. Kingsbery, Sr. and F. J. Kingsbury, Jr.: as printed in the source document; either one may be an error or misprint.
Index: sorting errors have not been rectified.
Changes made
Footnotes, illustrations and charts have been moved out of text paragraphs; footnotes have been renumbered consecutively throughout the book (and footnote references have been adjusted where necessary).
Some obvious minor typographical and punctuation errors have been corrected silently.
Text in dashed boxes have been transcribed from the accompanying charts, and give a (very) approximate indication of the relative positions of chart elements.
List of names after page 20: Patrick Millar changed to Patrick Miller.
Index: the inconsistent lay-out has been standardised; some entries (mainly proper names) have been changed to conform to the spelling used in the text.