Dr. Bowditch, President of the American Academy. xiii 
mony of their respect for his private character, as well as of the 
public services rendered by him to the cause of science. 
He was elected a member of the American Academy in the 
year 1799; and from that period he communicated several papers, 
upon various questions of science, which are published in the 
different volumes of the Academy’s Memoirs, and of which it is 
proper to give some account. 
His first communication was “ A new Method of working a Lunar 
Observation,” published in the second volume of the Memoirs. 
This had been used by him for a long time before its publication, 
and previously to the appearance of the Transactions of the Royal 
Society for 1797, in which there is a method somewhat similar, by 
Mr. Mendoza y Rios. His object was, to simplify the modes of 
applying the Corrections, as they are called; which was always 
an embarrassing process to learners. By Dr. Bowditch’s method 
there remained no difference of cases, and the Corrections were 
always to be applied in the same manner, whatever might be the 
distance and altitudes of the observed bodies. In an Appendix to 
this useful paper he proposes an improvement, to abridge materially 
the labor of making the necessary calculations for determining the 
longitude. This method was afterwards incorporated (with further 
improvements) into his Practical Navigator, where it has ever since 
retained its place. It may be here added, that the importance of 
this method, in a practical view, was so highly estimated abroad, 
that the eminent French astronomer, M. Delambre, thought it 
deserving of particular notice and commendation in the Connois- 
sance des Tems (for 1808), published under his care, while a mem- 
ber of the French Board of Longitude. 
The next paper communicated by Dr. Bowditch to the Academy 
was upon a question of a higher class, and is entitled “ Observations 
of the Comet of 1807.” Before any account of this comet had 
