202 Astronomical and Nautical Collections. 



assist in preserving from oblivion all that deserves to be remem- 

 bered, and a great deal that might as well be forgotten. 



But with regard to the general accuracy of the computations, 

 and the impression, it is already acknowledged throughout Eu- 

 rope, that the Nautical Almanac is the most correct of all the 

 ephemerides which are intended for nautical uses. Let Mr. 

 Baily only turn to pages 371, 372, and 373 of the Coimaissance 

 des Terns for the present year, and see how those pages are 

 filled, and from whom the materials were received ; let him con- 

 sider that the Nautical Almanac is always published six months 

 before the Connaissance des Terns ; and let him examine the 

 eclipses of the fourth satellite of Jupiter for 1824, and, after 

 this, let him pronounce a distinct opinion upon the com- 

 parative accuracy of the two publications. Perhaps he will 

 say, as Mr. Arago has done on the same subject, " S'il y a 

 du nitrite <l servir d'exemple aux atitres, il y en a ■peut-ctre plus 

 encore H ne pas s'en vanter soi-mcme ;' but Mr. Arago, even 

 in a moment of accidental irritation, did not attempt to disprove 

 the general superiority of iha Nautical Almanac, as a correct 

 ephemeris. 



2. Again; ** Is it not mortifying to reflect, that, since the 

 time of Halley, (the contemporary of Newton,) this country 

 has not produced a single astronomical table : that although 

 the Royal Observatory at Greenwich has been established 

 nearly one hundred and fifty years, its observations since the 

 time of Flamsteed, have been of no essential advantage to the 

 world, until they have passed through foreign hands, and been 

 returned to this country in the shape of tables, formed for va- 

 rious purposes by the successive labours of Mayer, Delambre, 

 Lalande, Burg, Burckhardt, andBESSEL? Look at the 

 various columns which compose the monthly pages of the 

 Nautical Almanac: — there is not a single article of English 

 origin: — they are all deduced from tables which have been 

 formed by some of those authors to whom I have just al- 

 luded." 



Now, in the first place, it might have been expected that 

 a person so conversant as Mr. Baily with the history of astro- 

 nomy throughout all ages, and so jealous of the honour of his 

 country, would have known, and would have recollected, that 

 i\\Q first essentially accurate tables of the moon were fairly pro- 

 duced in this country by Mr. Charles Mason ; and he might 

 have read, in a late memorandum on the subject of the lunar 

 tables, that the actual introduction of these tables, with all 

 their equations, was delayed, rather than expedited, by the re- 

 spect of Dr. Maskelyne for the computations of the great mathe- 

 maticians of the continent. It is true that Mason followed the 

 forms already indicated by Euler and Mayer : but without the 

 theory of Newton, and the observations of Bradley and Maske- 



