410 Zach OH Mej)eati?ig Circles. 



corded in our three letters published in 1812 in the Biblioiheque 

 Britafinique de Geneve. 



Bouguer, De la Condamine and Maskelyne wished to de- 

 termine the density of our earth ; and they undertook their 

 experiments ad hoc. Mechain and Delambre wished to de- 

 termine the magnitude and figure of the earth, and to fix the 

 length of an invariable and universal standard of measure ; 

 they had made all their experiments to that end : our project 

 had nothing in common with theirs ; it was neither our in- 

 tention to detei-mine the density, nor the magnitude, nor the 

 figure of the earth, nor the length of an universal measure. 

 Our aim was merely to try whether a repeating circle of 

 Reichenbach would exhibit the same anomalies given by a re- 

 peating circle of Lenoir of nearly the same dimensions. 



The English artist highly disapproves, and even condemns 

 us without mercy for having dared to make use of a repeating 

 circle of such small dimension when we wanted to determine 

 results of so delicate a nature. But is this esteemed artist ig- 

 norant, or has he forgotten, that the French astronomers had 

 used instruments of the same kind, of the same dimensions, 

 and certainly otherwise very inferior to ours, for operations 

 far niore delicate, far more important than ours, which was 

 only an object of the private curiosity of an amateur ? 



The artist, in his paper, calls ours a disoarjish experiment, 

 and says that it might be permitted to stand " on its own lit- 

 tle base." Without doubt it is of small stature ; but all the 

 colossal experiments made for the last 30 years in France and 

 Spain stand upon these same dwarfish bases ; for all the world 

 knows (if we except the author of the English paper, who ap- 

 pears not to know,) that all these colossal experiments were 

 made with dwarfish repeating circles. He will answer that 

 they are not the better for that. Be it so ; but we will re- 

 mind this great artist of the insult which a David dared to 

 offer to a Goliah ; when at Milan, with oiu* pigmy of Reichen- 

 bach of half a foot radius, we stood the assault of an 8-foot 

 colossus of Ramsden, we found a great discordance between 

 these two instruments; we then made the same reflection, 

 and almost in the same terms, as the English artist. We 

 asked m our first letter published in 1812 in the Bibliotkeque 

 Britannique, which we have since more loudly repeated, 

 " Where lies the error ? In the colossal or in the dwarfish in- 

 strument ?" Our readers know on which side victory has been 

 obtained. 



The English artist, while he blames us for using a repeating 

 circle of such small dimension to determine the density oi the 



earth, 



