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Ixviil Notes. 
foundation upon which have since been successively established the Phalosophi- 
cal Library, so called, and the present Salem Athenewm. Thus in early life 
I found near me a better collection of philosophical and scientific works than 
could be found in any other part of the United States nearer than Philadelphia. 
This inestimable advantage has made me deeply a debtor to the Salem Athe- 
neum ; and I do therefore give to that Institution the sum of one thousand 
dollars, the income thereof to be for ever applied to the promotion of its 
objects and the extension of its usefulness. ”’ 
Judge White adds :—‘‘I am happy to have it in my power to add, on the 
authority of the late venerable Dr. Prince, that the gentlemen into whose hands 
this collection of philosophical and scientific works had thus fallen (of whom 
he was one, and for many years after their librarian,) made an offer of remu- 
neration to Dr. Kirwan, who respectfully declined it, expressing his satisfac- 
tion, that his valuable library had found so useful a destination.” 
NOTE F. p. xvi. 
In order to give some idea of the labor expended on his calculations in this 
instance, it may be here mentioned, that the original manuscript volume upon 
this comet consists of 144 folio pages of figures, in his minute and close hand- 
writing ; while all that the public are acquainted with is the resulfs, which 
he has compressed into twelve quarto pages of the printed Memoirs of the 
Academy. The following extract of a letter from him to the German 
astronomer, Baron Zach, in relation to this subject, will be interesting to 
the American reader. The letter is dated at Salem, the 22d of November, 
1822, and is published in Baron Zach’s Correspondance Astronomique, Vol. x. 
p. 223. 
“(In calculating the orbits of the comets of 1807 and 1815 [1811 7], I made 
many unnecessary calculations, as you will see in my memoir ; but it was an 
amusement to me, to see how near I could come to the true elements of those 
orbits by means of observations made only with a Reflecting Circle of 
Borda ; and I had the satisfaction to find some of them agree perfectly with 
those which the best astronomers of Europe had ascertained.”’ 
Baron Zach, in a note, inserts the elements here mentioned, with the 
following remark : — “‘ As the literary productions of America reach us very 
