298 French Royal Academy of Sciences. 
in politics than other men, because their curiosity finds food 
enough in things totally unknown, just as we are accustomed to 
think little of revolutions among people who have still te disco- 
ver new worlds, in which they may extend themselves. 
«‘ The operations which had re-united us being thus happily 
accomplished, the brig that had conveyed the English observers 
set sail, and departed from Dunkirk. 1 could not see this vessel 
depart with indifference, in which I had been so obligingly re- 
ceived the preceding year, in passing to the Isles of Shetland, 
and the officers of which had afforded me such assistance in my 
observations. The captain, on quitting the port, hoisted the 
French flag, saluted us with fifteen pieces of cannon, and, while 
he could render himself audible, or we could see him, con- 
tinued to testify to us every mark of friendly recollection. As it 
was expedient that the point of junction of the English and 
French operations might always be re-ascertained, M. Arago 
and I thought proper to erect some lasting monument. The 
city of Dunkirk freed us from this care in a manner too ho- 
nourable to them not to call here for our gratitude. A little 
marble column, surmounted with a spire, is to be erected in this 
place, and a short inscription will record the object of the ope- 
ration, with the names of the observers of the two countries. At 
the Shetland Isles, the extremity of the great arc has been marked 
in like manner, in the garden of Mr. Edmonston, by a little mo- 
nument which he has caused to be erected in the place where we 
had made our observations. In Spain, in the Isles called Pithiuse, 
the southern extremity of our arc is consecrated by across. Thus, 
in the most distant countries, and under the most opposite forms 
of government, those institutions which are calculated to preserve 
order in society, tend to the same object, whether their benefi- 
cent influence be founded on morality, on politics, or on religion. 
“<The operations of which we have spoken refer to the first of 
the methods by which the figure of the earth may be determined. 
The other method, which employs the measure of a pendulum, 
had been practised, together with the preceding, on all the points 
of our arc, We had given an account, last year, of a tour made 
in England, Scotland, and the Shetland Isles, to carry our ap- 
paratus of the pendulum over the whole extent of the English are. 
The English. government, which had ‘favoured this operation ~ 
with great kindness, naturally desired that it should be executed, 
in like manner, by an observer of their own nation. Captain 
Kater, Member of the London Society, an experimentalist singu- 
larly exact, and author of an excellent Memoir relative to the 
measure of the pendulum, upon the principle of seconds, has 
been deputed for this purpose. He conveyed, with much precau- 
tion, to Edinburgh and the Shetland Islands, a solid pendulum, 
of 
