Dr. Bowditch, President of the American Academy. Xxi 
support of the accuracy of that calculation. Some time after that, 
however, two British mathematicians, Mr. Dawson and Mr. Landen, 
took the opposite side; the latter of those writers showing, that 
“several small quantities neglected by Dr. Stewart, in order to 
simplify the geometrical investigation, would produce a very great 
effect on his estimate of the Sun’s distance.” Mr. Landen also 
expressed some doubts of the accuracy of Dr. Stewart’s principles ; 
but he made no calculation to ascertain, whether the neglected force 
did in fact produce any effect in the result. 
This subject was again brought forward in the interesting biogra- 
phy of Dr. Stewart by Professor Playfair;* who, indeed, notices 
the objections of Mr. Landen, but concludes, notwithstanding, that 
Stewart’s method, “instead of being liable to objection, is deserving 
of the highest praise, since it resolves, by geometry alone, a problem 
which had eluded the efforts of some of the greatest mathematicians, 
even when they availed themselves of the utmost resources of the 
integral calculus.” 
It is a remarkable fact in the history of astronomical science, that 
the accuracy of Stewart’s method should also have been maintained 
by Dr. Hutton, by La Lande, and, still more recently, by Professor 
Playfair, in his elegant article on Physical Astronomy, re-published 
so lately as the year 1824, in the Supplement to the Encyclo- 
pedia Britannica, (in which Dr. Stewart is said to have demon- 
strated this remarkable theorem,) and again by the same writer, in 
an able article of a celebrated Review, in which he says, that Dr. 
Stewart had treated this subject “with singular skill and suc- 
cess.” T 
* Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Vol. I. p. 69, of the 
Historical part. 
{ Edinburgh Review, Vol. XI. p. 280. 
