THE 



ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOYERY. 



MECHANICS AND USEFUL ARTS. 



THE UNION BETWEEN SCIENCE AND COMMERCE. 



IT is one of the characteristics of the present age that commercial associa- 

 tions of private persons, receiving from the State no assistance except a 

 sanction of their union, and employing their funds only in the ordinary 

 modes of commerce, have been able to execute works which scarcely any 

 power of the State could attempt, and incidentally to give to objects not con- 

 templated in their original enterprise, an amount of assistance which no 

 direct action of the State could give. The latter advantage has been ex- 

 perienced in numerous instances, affecting our social comforts and our con- 

 structive arts : it is now felt with equal force in our more abstract science. 

 The history of a late astronomical investigation will illustrate this remark. 



The celebrity of the observations of Greenwich and Paris, and the close 

 connection between the subjects of their observations, made it desirable long 

 since, to determine their difference of longitude. About the year 1787 the 

 matter was on both sides taken up by the national authorities, and an expen- 

 sive and accurate survey was undertaken, the English part at the expense 

 of the British Government, and the French part at that of the French Gov- 

 ernment for connecting the two observatories. This geodetic connection 

 of observatories was the first and ostensible object of the survey, though it 

 led, ultimately, in England, to the construction of ordnance maps. The 

 difference of longitude ascertained by this expensive process was, no doubt, 

 free from any lai-ge error ; yet men of science were so little satisfied with it 

 that it was thought desirable to take the earliest opportunity of verifying the 

 result by an operation of a different kind. 



In the year 1825 another attempt was made also at the expense of the 

 State. On the English side it was managed principally by Mr., now Sir 



