The difficulties, dangers, and hardships to be encountered in founding a new colony are truthfully set forth, whilst it is shown how readily these are overcome by perseverance and intelligent labor.
It will be seen that a liberal education has its uses, even under circumstances the least likely to foster the social amenities, and that, too, not only as regards the mental well-being of its possessors, but also as regards augmenting their material comforts.
In the _Swiss Family Robinson_ the resources of Natural History have been largely, and perhaps somewhat freely, drawn upon.

This branch of knowledge has, therefore, been left throughout the present volume comparatively untouched.

Nevertheless, as it is the aim of the narrator to combine instruction with amusement, the more elementary phenomena of the Physical Sciences have been blended with the current of the story--thus garnishing, as it were, the dry, hard facts of Owen, Liebig, and Arago, with the more attractive, groupings of life and action.
The reader has, consequently, in hand a _melange_ of the useful and agreeable--a little for the grave and a little for the gay--so that, should our endeavors to impart instruction prove unavailing, _en revanche_ we may, perhaps, be more successful in our efforts to amuse.
CONTENTS..