XXXIV Mr. Pickering’s Eulogy on 
are developed by him in so exact and satisfactory a manner, as 
hardly to leave any thing further to be expected from the most 
intense application of the human mind, with the aid of the most 
perfect instruments of analysis. 
The two divisions, or books, above mentioned, form the first vol- 
ume of the entire work. 
The third book, with which the next volume opens, treats of the 
Figures of the heavenly bodies, deduced theoretically, in the most 
generalized form, from the attraction of homogeneous spheroids 
terminated by surfaces of the second order; the developement of 
the attraction of any spheroid in a series; the figure of a homo- 
geneous fluid mass in equilibrium, and having a rotatory motion; 
and, lastly, the figure of a spheroid, differing but little from a perfect 
sphere, and covered by a fluid stratum in equilibrium. 
These theoretical results are then compared with actual observa- 
tions made of the figures of the Earth and the planet Jupiter; of 
which last the very perceptible oblateness, as the author observes, 
has been determined with great accuracy.* This third book ends 
with an investigation of the Figure of the Atmosphere of the heay- 
enly bodies. 
La Place next considers the Oscillations of the Sea and the 
Atmosphere ; discussing, in their order, the theory of the ebb and 
flow of the sea, the stability of the equilibrium of the sea, the man- 
ner of noticing in the theory of the ebb and flow the various cir- 
cumstances, which, in a harbour, have an influence on the tides; 
and, lastly, making a comparison of the theory with observation, 
and arriving at the conclusion, that the principal phenomena of the 
tides are in accordance with the theory of universal gravity. 
The subject of his fifth book, which completes the First Part of 
* Bowditch’s La Place, Vol. II. p. 486. 
