24 Life of the Rev. John FUnusteed, 



concerned himself with the Prince George of Denmark 

 without my consent, in the edition ; and was so hold, as by 

 his creatures to intimate to me what, he wanted; but the 

 cunning failed him ; the sheets will be copied in a short 

 time ; and I hope, if God spares me health one year more, 

 I may see them all printed and fit to be published. 



Having thus given the history of my observations of the 

 fixed stars, and shewn both what the true obliquity of the 

 ecliptic, or the inclination of the earth's axis is, as the 

 assertors of their motion would rather call it, and how it 

 came to pass, that I have met with so many obstructions 

 and hindrances in the preparing the Catalogue of them for 

 the press and publishing of it ; having also shewn how I 

 determined the inequality of the earth's motion, and the 

 true places of some of the principal (stars in the Catalogue) 

 and from them all the rest inserted in it, I shall next give 

 an account of such variations as may be caused in their right 

 ascensions and distances from the visible pole, by the 

 Parallax of the JEarth's orbit. 



From my first year's observations of the pole-star's meri- 

 dional distance from the vertex, I supposed that the parallax 

 was sensible. Some observations I had taken with the 

 sextant, of the intermutual distances of bright fixed stars 

 had caused me to suspect it before, for I found that I had 

 them at some times of the year, some little bigger than 

 others. But the sextant being an unfixed instrument, that 

 required two persons to make use of it, and the air being 

 changeable, and different at different times of the year, and 

 consequently, the distances being more or less contracted 

 by refractions, according to the greater or less density of 

 the air, or greater or less inclination of the planes passing 

 through the two observed stars, to the vertical circles fall- 

 ing upon them, it was very difficult to make any good con- 

 clusion from them. Continuing, therefore, my observations 

 of the pole-star yearly, I found always a small, but sensible 

 difference, betwixt those I took in September, and the fol- 

 lowing months of each year, which argued a sensible 

 parallax in the star. 



[An account was given of these observations, in a letter 

 from Flamsteed to Professor Caswell, published December 

 22nd, 1698. By the observed distances of the pole star 



