The advertisement was further amplified in its second appear- 

 ance, in the issue of March 21-22, 1719: 



At the house formerly Sir Charles Hobby's are taught grammar, writing, 

 after a free & easy manner in all hands usually practiced, Arithmetick V^ul- 

 gar and Decimal in a concise and Practical Method, Merchants Accompts, 

 Geometry, Algebra, Mensuration, Geography, Trigonometry, Astronomy, 

 Navigation and other parts of the Mathematicks, with the use of the Globes 

 and other Mathematical Instruments, by Samuel Grainger. 



They whose business won't permit 'em to attend the usual School Hours, 

 shall be carefully attended and Instructed in the Evenings. 



R. F. Seybold * has noted that: "In advertisements of 1753 

 and 1754, John Lewis, of New York City, announced 'What is 

 called a New Method of Navigation, is an excellent Method of 

 Trigonometry here particularly applied to Navigation; But it is 

 of great use in all kinds of measuring and in solving many Arith- 

 metical Questions.' James Cosgrove, of Philadelphia, in 1755, 

 taught 'geometry, trigonometry, and their application in sur- 

 veying, navigation, etc.,' and Alexander Power, in 1766, 'With 

 their Application to Surveying, Navigation, Geography, and 

 Astronomy'." These subjects were featured also in the evening 

 schools of the colonial period, maintained by private schoolmasters 

 in some of the larger communities for the education of those who 

 could not attend school in the daytime. 



According to Seybold, surveying and navigation were the most 

 popular mathematical subjects taught. Some explanation is to be 

 derived from the statement by Schoen ^ that: "In the days when 

 the 'bounds' of great wilderness tracts were being marked off by 

 deep-cut blazes in the trees along a line, a knowledge of land sur- 

 veying was a useful skill, and many a boy learned its elements by 

 following the 'boundsgoer' in his work of 'running the line.' x^nd 

 those who did not actually take part in running the line must have 

 attended many a gay springtime 'processioning' when neighbors 

 made a festive occasion out of 'perambulating the bounds'. "Vague 

 land grants and inaccurate surveys," he adds, "made the subject 

 of boundary lines a prime issue in the everyday life of colonial 

 homes." 



* R. F. Seybold, "The Evening School in Colonial America," Bureau of Edu- 

 cational Research, Bulletin 31 (University of Illinois, 1925), p. 28. 



^ H. H. ScHGEN, "The Making of Maps and Charts," Ninth Yearbook of the 

 Council for the Social Studies (Cambridge, 1938), p. 83; also Edmond R. Kiely, 

 Surveying Instruments: Their History and Classroom Use (New York: Teachers 

 College, Columbia University, 1947), pp. 239-250. 



7 



