xliv Mr. Pickering’s Eulogy on 
want complained of is the production of “a lady, our own country- 
woman,” and the other, of an “.4merican, by birth and residence.” 
The writer then notices, in terms of high commendation, the first 
volume of Dr. Bowditch’s La Place, and the “Mechanism of the 
Heavens,” by the highly gifted female alluded to;* who, in that 
extraordinary work, has communicated the results of La Place’s dis- 
coveries to the English nation, in their own language; and has thus 
repaid the obligation, which a century before had been conferred 
upon British science by a celebrated female mathematician of 
France ; who, by her Translation of the Principia and her Commen- 
tary upon it, first made known to the French nation, in their native 
language, the great discoveries of Newton. + 
Dr. Bowditch, having constantly in view practical utility, has in 
his first volume brought together various formulas which are of fre- 
quent use in the work and notes, and placed them at the end of his 
Introduction, for the convenience of reference. Of these he has 
given demonstrations at the end of the volume. 
Another improvement, as it has heretofore been generally con- 
sidered, is the introduction of diagrams; which students of this 
science find extremely convenient, though they have been discarded 
by mathematicians of great eminence. The use of them, to the 
extent allowed by Dr. Bowditch, is commended by a distinguished 
French mathematician, from whom Dr. Bowditch had received sey- 
eral letters respecting his work. { Whether the practice has a 
tendency ultimately to retard or to facilitate the progress of the 
student, is not a question to be discussed on the present occasion. 
In the Notes upon the Second Chapter of the First Book, which 
treats of the Motion of a Pendulum, Dr. Bowditch has done justice 
* Mrs. Somerville. + See Note I, at the end. 
{ Letter from M. Lacroix to Dr. Bowditch, April 5th, 1830. 
