Notes. Ixv 
Navigation, to make Dr. Bowditch’s supposed inaccuracies a particular object 
of attack. In criticizing his revision of Moore’s work, Dr. Mackay says : 
—‘‘In this last book, which is pretended to be very correct, are many 
errors and contradictions,’’ and, “‘it would be a tedious task to enumerate 
the errors”’ contained in it.— Pref. p. xiv. Ist edit. 
This charge was promptly and emphatically repelled by Dr. Bowditch in 
his next edition (1807), in which he says :— “A number of mistakes have 
been made in printing the Tables of Mr. Kirby’s first (London) edition, 
some of which haye been taken notice of by Dr. Mackay, in the preface to 
his Complete Navigator ; and, as the manner in which those mistakes are 
mentioned might lead the reader to suppose, that the same errors existed 
in the American Tables, it is thought proper explicitly to state, that not one 
of the ‘many errors and contradictions’ Dr. Mackay has mentioned is to 
be found therein.” 
Dr. Bowditch then adds, in a spirit of candor which his rivals and adver- 
saries would have done well to imitate : — “It is so difficult to obtain perfect 
accuracy in a table depending solely on observations, that no one ever 
published was perhaps entirely free from error. As a proof of this assertion, 
we may refer to the Table published in London, in 1802, by order of the 
Commissioners of Longitude, in the third edition of the Requisite Tables ; 
which Table is esteemed as accurate as any published ; for in it the latitude 
of Sandy Hook is nearly four degrees too much, and that of Barbuda nearly 
fifteen miles too much, the last error being common to almost all books and 
chartsie iss If farther proof of the justness of the remark, —that errors 
exist in all tables of latitudes and longitudes, were wanting, it might be 
obtained by inspecting the Table published at London, in 1804, in The 
Complete Navigator by Dr. Mackay, in which are many similar errors ; 
three of which only will be mentioned, viz. Cape Ann Lights are laid 
down eleven miles too far to the northward, and are placed several miles 
to the westward of Salem instead of the eastward ; Barbuda is placed fifteen 
miles too far to the northward, and Atwood’s Keys nearly a hundred miles 
too far south ; so that the remark made by Dr. Mackay, in the preface to his 
work, ‘that the case of the seaman who has to trust to such tables is truly 
lamentable,’ might in many instances apply with equal justice to his own 
table. The object in view, in pointing out these errors, is, to impress 
on the mind of the reader the utter impossibility of obtaining a perfectly 
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