4 19 Zach o« Repeating Circles. 



only undertaken for the gratification of the curiosity of an 

 amateur who pursued it for his own amusement ; that it did 

 not pretend to decide on any of those elements, proposed with 

 so much pomp and eclat to all the nations of the earth, which 

 none of them would receive, and which France herself has re- 

 jected; — setting aside, I say, all these considerations, we will 

 confine ourselves to the task of showing, that our attempt was 

 not so utterly irrational as it is said to be, from the circum- 

 stance of our ha\'ing dared to undertake our experiment with 

 a repeating instrument so small as to be regarded with an eye 

 of contempt. Let us see whether it merits this disdain, and 

 whether the modest David cannot take his sling again and 

 hurl a stone at this haughty Goliah. 



We will ask then, in the first place, how it happened that 

 this despised pygmy of half a foot in height should have given 

 a better latitude than the eight-foot colossus ? How it hap- 

 pened that the irregularities in the little repeating circle of 

 Reichenbach were much less than in the great miu'al of Rams- 

 den ? Three years afterwards we presented to the Observa- 

 tory at Milan a large three-foot repeating circle of Reichen- 

 bach with a fixed level, which had been constructed on pur- 

 pose for us*; and one of the most able observers of that Ob- 

 servatory found, after thousands of observations, the same 

 latitude which we found with our pygmy. [Effem. Astro7i. di 

 Milcmo per 1815. Apjiend. p. 3. Cor. Ast. vol. v. p. 300.) 



2°. We wish to know how it has happened, that with our 

 pygmy wfe should have been able to discover that the latitude 

 of the Observatory of Padua was so ill-determined with an- 

 other colossus, a fine eight-foot mural of Ramsden, and in 

 which the error was not less than 22" !. Several years after, 

 exactly the same latitude which we had established with our 

 pygmy was found with other English and German instruments, 

 both repeating and non-repeating. [Cor. Ast. vol. i. p. 457; 

 vol. ii. p. 8; vol. v. p. 297.) 



3°. We will ask how it has happened, that with this same 

 dwarf, we were enabled to discover that the latitude of the 

 Observatory of Bologna was in an error of 18"? We deter- 

 mined with this little circle a new latitude, which was after- 

 wards confirmed by observations made with other repeating 

 circles. {Cor. Ast. vol. ii. p. 8 — 471.) 



4". We will ask how it happened, that at the Observatory 

 of Turin, with this same little circle we were able to deter- 

 mine a latitude which had never been determined before ; and 

 that the able astronomer of that Observatory afterwards found 

 the same latitude with a 15-inch repeating circle of Fortin, 



* Effemerid. Astronom. di Milanoper 1812. Append, p. 3. 



and 



