the Journals of the late Reuben Burrow. 521 



Mathematical Master at Woolwich (Dr. Hutton), is paid with 

 profusion for his extra services ; though he has more than double 

 the salary that T had, and his scholars never made half the 

 improvement that those in the Drawing-room did in the same 

 interval.^^ 



Mr. William Jones, F.R.S. was the father of the late cele- 

 brated Sir William Jones, and this extract adds many curious 

 particulars respecting him to the sketch of his life given by Mr. 

 Robertson in Ilutton^s Mathematical Dictionary. No doubt 

 Mrs. Jones acted upon the best advice when she relinquished the 

 project cf publishing her late husband's Course of Mathematics; 

 she had now the prospect of having an infant son to protect, 

 educate, and prepare for the actual struggles of life, and under 

 such circumstances the considerable outlay which must have been 

 incurred in case of publication, could not be justified by the un- 

 certain sale of a Course of Mathematics, although her husband 

 had died in better circumstances than usually falls to the lot of 

 mathematicians. The pamphlet referred to as having been 

 written by Simpson against De Moivre, was most probably the 

 Appendix to the Doctrine of Annuities, published by the former 

 in 1743. In the treatise on this subject, Mr. Simpson had 

 spoken favourably of De Moivre^s work, but these well-meant 

 compliments were misunderstood by the latter, and led him to 

 insert some very harsh expressions respecting Simpson in the 

 Preface to a new edition of his Annuities on Lives. These im- 

 proper inferences gave rise to Simpson's Appendix, which con- 

 tained a dignified answer to De Moivre's " personal and malig- 

 nant representations," and so far convinced the latter of the 

 erroneousness of his conclusions, that he omitted the obnoxious 

 passages in the next edition of 1750. Most probably Mr. Jones 

 felt anxious for the welfare of the Royal Society, and did not 

 desire that such unseemly differences should exist between two 

 of its most distinguished ornaments. Mr. Gardiner is well 

 known as the editor of the best edition of Sherwin's Logarithmic 

 Tables, and Dr. Bevis was one of the ablest astronomers of the 

 last century. He erected an Observatory at Newington Green 

 at his own expense, and published Dr. Halley's Astronomical 

 Tables in 1749 with considerable additions. He assisted in the 

 composition of several works on science j was a correspondent 

 to the Mathematical Magazine, conducted by his friends Messrs. 

 Moss and Witchell, and contributed twenty-seven papers to the 

 Philosophical Transactions. The account of Mr. Jones's Cata- 

 logue and the disposal of his library are without doubt in the 

 main correct, although the motives attributed to Dr. Bliss seem 

 scarcely sufficient to account for his opposition to its publication. 

 Whether the MSS. were burnt or sent down to Sherborne 



Fhih Mag, S. 4. No. 35. ^uppl. Vol. 5. 2 M 



