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V. — The Lancashire Geometers and their Writings* 

 By T. T. Wilkinson, F.R. A.S., Burnley. 



[Read December 28iA, 1882.} 



The extensive cultivation of the Ancient Geometry in Lanca- 

 shire and the northern counties generally, is a fact which has 

 forced itself upon the attention of several observers. From 

 a very early period of our scientific history, Lancashire and 

 the North have furnished their full quota of representatives 

 to the councils of Mathematical inquiry ; their hardy veterans 

 have oftentimes led the way to brilliant and useful discoveries. 

 Nor have these successful pioneers by any means been con- 

 fined to that class of society where " luxury and learned 

 ease" may be supposed to have lent their aid in accelerating 

 the progress of human knowledge. If proof of the general 

 assertion were required, we need only refer to the labours 

 of the late Dr. Dal ton and the Memoirs of the Manchester 

 Literary and Philosophical Society; but with regard to geo- 

 metry in particular, the pages of our mathematical periodicals 

 will readily furnish more exquisite specimens of the geometry 

 of the Greeks, mostly produced by Lancashire operatives, than 

 could be found in many laboured treatises of those whose 

 official stations have led them to cultivate the subject. 



Mr. Harvey well remarked to the York Meeting of the 

 British Association for the Advancement of Science, in 1831, 

 that there had long " existed a devoted band of men in the 

 North of England, resolutely bound to the pure and ancient 

 forms of geometry, who in the midst of the tumults of steam- 

 engines, cultivated it with unyielding ardour, preserving the 



