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Xl. Remarks and Suggestions, as to the State and Progress of 
the Government Trigonometrical Survey, with regard to the 
Dimensions, Figure and Structure of the Earth. By Mr. 
JouN Farey, Sen. 
To the Editor. 
SIR, — A SELECT Committee of the House of Commons, on 
Weights and Measures, after considering the three several Re- 
ports* of the late Government Commissioners on the same sub- 
ject, have made a Report to the House (which was ordered to be 
printed on the 28th of May, and which doubtless will find a place 
in your present or some early Number +) in which Report, after 
a well-merited compliment paid to Capt. Kater, for his elaborate 
and gratuitous Experiments on the Pendulum, in London, and for 
similar Observations on the principal Stations of the Trigonome- 
trical Survey of Great Britain, the Commisioners remark as fol- 
lows, viz. ‘* From these observations, deductions have been made, 
of great importance with respect to the general figure of the 
Earth, its density and internal construction. So that your Com- 
mittee are decidedly of opinion, that it wil! be highly proper to 
extend similar Observations over a still larger surface, so as. to 
connect the measurements and astronomical observations made 
by the different Nations of Europe, as much as possible, into one 
whole.” 
I am sorry not to be able to concur with the Committee in 
thinking, that deductions of any great importance, as to the ex- 
act figure or structure of the Earth, have yet resulted from the 
Trigonometrical Survey of these Islands, or that much, if any, of 
the wished-for information on these points would be derived, 
from more widely extending the Pendulum observations, until 
after such Mineralogical or stratigrophical Surveys and investi- 
gations shall have been made in England, as I have in your 48th 
volume, p.430, recommended, around the Stations, where al- 
ready the Standard Pendulum has been swung; Arbury Hill in 
particular. 
It appears to me also essential, that most or all of the several 
Observations that 1 have recommended in the volume quoted, 
including those of the Pendulum, should be very carefully made, 
* The First of these Reports will be found in p. 172, of our 54th volume, 
and the Third of them, in p. 359 of our 57th volume, and its Appendix in 
. 420; the intermediate Report, as well as two Appendixes, detailing the 
incongruous mass of legal provisions existing on this subject, and the still 
more incongruous and numerous local denominations of Measures and Weights 
in use, will doubtless ere long be printed in a separate form.—Epitor. 
+ See our Number for June, p. 432.—Eprr. A 
an 
