386 Mr. T. S. Davies on Geometry and Geometers. 



« Sir, " Oxford, Feb. 24, 1816. 



" The above are all the instances in which I can find any- 

 thing like what you desired me to look for : but although they 

 are only three in number, the last is new, as I see nothing 

 like it in Commandine. I am much obliged to you for Beja 

 Ganita, and regret that your efforts for the promotion of 

 scientific literature should be so little profitable to you. I 

 have had the pleasure of being able to complete the collation 

 sooner than I expected, and I lose no time in forwarding it 

 to you. I hope your friend will have no difficulty in under- 

 standing the references which I have made in the margins. 

 You may explain to him that I have drawn lines under the 

 words to which any various readings occurred, and I have put 

 numbers in the margins referring to them. These will be 

 found to have two interruptions : the first is from my having 

 in a few instances discovered variations in a second collation 

 which had previously escaped me, such as (18) No. S. P. VII. 

 (28) No. 9. P. VII. and (29) No. 9. P. IX.; the other inter- 

 ruption is from my having erased many references which I 

 had made in my first collation. These erasures consisted 

 almost entirely of what had been introduced by an excess of 

 minuteness, which had induced me to copy out some of the 

 contractions. Hence you will find very many of them in 

 P. VIII., for in the MS. No. 9 the page which contains from 

 BaylrtXearepov (line penult. P. VII.) to hodevra (line 4. P. IX.) 

 is written in a different hand from the two pages which pre- 

 cede and follow it, and it contains several contractions which 

 differ from the characters used in them; thus (29) it has 

 hehofJiev~(T7)^v for 8e8o/z6vtwv ar)fj,eLa)v where the printed text has 

 BeSofjuevoy arjfMeico ; but as I had no doubts about the meaning 

 of any of these contractions, I thought it useless to leave the 

 mention of them where no variation was offered in the read- 

 ings. Wherever any erasure has been made, the line which 

 was drawn under the word to which the reference was made 



is marked thus In some cases there are more words 



in the margin than that to which the various reading belongs; 

 but this occurs only where I thought that there might other- 

 wise be some mistake : if, however, in this or in any other 

 particular I have failed in making myself clearly understood, 

 I shall be happy in hearing from you or from your friend 

 (although I possibly have not the pleasure of his acquaintance), 

 and as I have Halley's book at hand, it will only be necessary 

 to mark the page and line in which the difficulty may occur. 

 " I have carefully made the collation three several times, 

 and the last time I repeated it I could discover no variation 

 which I had not previously noted ; I therefore feel confident 

 of the accuracy of what I send you. I hope likewise that it 



