1825.] Scientific Noticed — Miscellaneous, B03 



so forth, are of no material importance whatever ; and how- 

 difficult it is to avoid errors of this kind, may be inferred from 

 the circumstance of my having found about 1400 such errors in 

 Bradley's observations. 



The remark that the observations at Greenwich are com- 

 monly concluded at midnight, would be of some weight, if it 

 could be proved that any thing essential is omitted by this 

 practice, which does not appear to me to be the case. The 

 observations relate chiefly to the sun, the fundamental stars, the 

 moon, and the oppositions of the planets ; and it may easily 

 be discovered that these different series are exhibited with an 

 uncommon degree of perfection. Had the censor in the 

 Philosophical Magazine pointed out any other series of observa- 

 tions which could have been combined with these, so as not to 

 interfere with them, no doubt the Astronomer Royal would 

 have been much obhged to him. Every thing cannot be done 

 at once in an observatory ; and if as much is affected as can 

 be wished in one respect, something must be omitted in others. 

 But to multiply observations, without any plan or object what- 

 ever, would be mere idleness. Whoever is dissatisfied with the 

 actual riches of the Greenwich observations^ would do well to 

 make the attempt to excel them ; he would convince himself by 

 such an experiment that the labour and patience required for doing 

 so much, are fully sufficient to exhaust the powers of any one 

 man. 



The third class of errors, relating to the n^eteorological in- 

 struments, I have not yet mentioned, because I think myself 

 that greater accuracy is required in this department than it 

 has hitherto been usual to observe. 'And if I should be allowed 

 to suggest any improvement that could be made in the observa- 

 tions at Greenwich, it would be a more correct account of the 

 meteorological instruments, and of the place in which the 

 exterior thermometer is fixed." 



14. On the Zetland Islands, 



An accurate chart of the Zetland Islands has long been a 

 desideratum in British hydrography. Authorized surveys of 

 them have, it is true, been made ; but of these some are almost 

 obsolete ; and all are more or less partial or defective : and to 

 errors of this nature, perhaps as much as to any other cause, 

 are to be ascribed many of the disastrous shipwrecks of which 

 that remote country has too often been the melancholy scene. 



It is not a httle surprising that while the most extended, 

 expensive, and minute surveys have been executed by order of 

 the English government of many distant regions of the globe, 

 the nautical geography of the northern extremity of the British 

 Islands should have been so long suffered to remain in ob- 

 scurity. Charts are to maritime, what roads are to inland com- 



