French Nniional Institute. 143 



versified inclinations of the strata, and on the probable cause 

 which effects the alternating changes of land and sea ; but 

 having already trespassed so far on the periodical bounds of 

 your limited and select publication, I shall decline troubling 

 you further with my crude remarks. Their object has been 

 not to offer new facts, but new views of the subject ; and 

 to point out, however imperfectly, the most probable chan- 

 nel through which we are likely to arrive at any rational 

 theory of the diversified conformation of our globe. 

 I am, sir, your obedient humble servant, 



John Carr. 



Princess Street, Manchester, 

 August, 1809. 



XXT. Proceedings of Learned Societies. 



FRENCH NATIONAT^ INSTITUTE. 



Analysis of the Lnlours of the Class of Mathematical and 

 Physical Sciences of the French Institute, for the Year 1807. 



[Concluded from p. 76.] 



JVl. BouVARD has made a most useful addition to astronomy 

 by his tables of Jupiter and Saturn. It will be recollected 

 that the inequalities of these two planets have long per- 

 plexed astronomers, and would have still continued to do so, 

 if the analysis of M. La Place had not discovered equations 

 of a long period, which, by being confounded with the meaii 

 motions, had apparently accelerated the motion of Jupiter, 

 and proportionally retarded that of Saturn. By the help of 

 this theory, compared with the best observations made for 

 more than one hundred years, M. Delambre succeeded in 

 reducing to half a minute, under the most unfavourable cir- 

 cumstances, the errors of the tables, which formerly were 

 from 15 to 20 times greater for Jupiter, and more than 40 

 times for Saturn. The errors would have been still less if 

 modern observations were more numerous, and admitted of 

 our rejecting every thing that preceded 1745 : but the author 

 had disposed his work in such away as to be able to resume 

 it, either of himself, or by means of another astronomer, 

 as soon as some good observations were at hand. There re- 

 mained besides a trifling inaccuracy respecting the mass of 

 Saturn, and consequently the inequalities of Jupiter — M. La 

 Place has revised and perfected his theory — M. Bouvard has 

 been able to acquire a clearer idea of the doubtful mass ; — 

 and from all these changes, partly owing to good observr:- 

 tions made since the printing of the first tables in 17S9, 



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